For a heat-pipe solar collector hot water system, one of the major design problems is addressed on the heat transfer between the heat-pipe and the storage tank. In this paper, a natural convection heat transfer model is considered in the water storage tank with a load taking on a wall. Governing equations are transformed into vorticity-stream equations. Gauss-Seidel method with a finite-difference implicit numerical scheme is applied. The temperature of the heat-pipe surface in the storage tank is considered as uniform that corresponding to a condensation saturation condition. It is shown that the heat transfer rate increase with the Rayleigh number, the heat-pipe length, the heat-pipe thickness and the angle of inclination, and decrease slightly with the height location of the heat-pipe. The results may provide design information for related heat transfer considerations.
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