PREDICTION OF CONCENTRATION DISTRIBUTION IN PARABOLIC TROUGH SOLAR COLLECTORS

Abstract

The rational design of a parabolic trough solar collector PTC from metrological and material data necessitates the availability of a method for evaluating the optical performance. For this purpose, it is imperative to have precise knowledge of the concentrated flux pattern on the outer surface of the absorbing tube. The existing methods in literature are very general and the consequent expertise and computation facilities required to exercise them may prevent their use by the design engineers in industry. In the present paper, a simple but reliable analytical method is developed which enables the determination of the concentrated flux distribution on the outer surface of the absorber tube of a PTC. Both defaults resulting from contours and sun tracking are considered in the analysis. A case study for a site having a latitude angle of 31°N is presented. The effects of collector and absorber tube dimensions as well as the contour and sun tracking errors on concentrated flux pattern, average flux concentrati...