Study on heat loss performance of triangle cavity absorber for parabolic trough concentrators

A triangle absorber for the parabolic trough concentrator has been designed in this paper and the theoretical and experimental studies about the influences of the absorber inclination and the ambient wind speed on the heat loss performances were carried out. It is found that the theoretical calculating values comply with the experimental measuring values, and the relative errors are within 7.30%, 4.13% respectively. It has been discovered in the study that the heat loss of the absorber increases with the increase of the inclination and the ambient wind speed. The influence of the ambient wind speed on the heat loss is relatively large, while that of the inclination is relatively small. Meanwhile, the heat loss in windless conditions is equivalent with that of the evacuated tube. Some specific methods for improving the structure of the cavity absorber have been proposed, which can provide references for further studies on the cavity absorber for trough concentrators.