The Effect of Material Properties on the Thermal Efficiency of the Minto Solar Wheel

The characteristic of the thermal performance of the Minto solar wheel is that its thermal efficiency is strongly dependent on the material properties of the working fluid. For a specified working fluid, the thermal efficiency of the ideal cycle of the Minto solar wheel is dependent only on the mean diameter of the wheel. To study the effect of the material properties of the working fluid on the ideal thermal efficiency, 14 working fluids are selected, and their thermal efficiencies as functions of the mean diameter of the wheel are calculated and compared with each other. Among these fluids, R-12, R-115, R-500, R-22 and R-13B1 achieve better thermal performance than the others.