Parabolic Trough Collector with Internal Fractal Fins in Receiver to Increase Thermal Performance in Working Fluid

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelica Palacios ◽  
Dario Amaya ◽  
Olga Ramos

Abstract Concentrated solar power technologies have been studied in recent years as a potential solution for energy production industry , however this kind of systems face different challenges in order to increase thermal performance and efficiency. This paper presents the results of a thermal analysis on a parabolic trough collector with different receivers internal fins configurations, systems were studied in CFD Solidworks® flow simulation software and compared with a traditional parabolic collector with cylindrical receiver. Results shows that the lowest thermal performance was achieved with a cylindrical pipe, instead fractal fins receiver with 5 internal fins achieves a temperature increase of 27% and the best pipe configuration was fractal Descartes with 12 internal pipes which e the cylindrical temperature in 29%.

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 20902
Author(s):  
O. Achkari ◽  
A. El Fadar

Parabolic trough collector (PTC) is one of the most widespread solar concentration technologies and represents the biggest share of the CSP market; it is currently used in various applications, such as electricity generation, heat production for industrial processes, water desalination in arid regions and industrial cooling. The current paper provides a synopsis of the commonly used sun trackers and investigates the impact of various sun tracking modes on thermal performance of a parabolic trough collector. Two sun-tracking configurations, full automatic and semi-automatic, and a stationary one have numerically been investigated. The simulation results have shown that, under the system conditions (design, operating and weather), the PTC's performance depends strongly on the kind of sun tracking technique and on how this technique is exploited. Furthermore, the current study has proven that there are some optimal semi-automatic configurations that are more efficient than one-axis sun tracking systems. The comparison of the mathematical model used in this paper with the thermal profile of some experimental data available in the literature has shown a good agreement with a remarkably low relative error (2.93%).


2020 ◽  
Vol 170 ◽  
pp. 01030
Author(s):  
Aditya Bawane ◽  
Sanjay Lakade ◽  
Virendra Bhojwani

Solar energy is available in abundant quantity which can be utilized for thermal and power generation applications. The maximum solar energy extraction for application is challenging. This review focuses on the performance enhancement of parabolic trough collector. Heat transfer through absorber tube, various nanofluids with concentration is stated. Thermal efficiency increases due to the use of parabolic collector with booster reflector and glass cover over the system performance. The complex 3D analysis (ANSYS) gives accurate distribution of heat flux over the absorber tube.


2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
C. V. Chachin Vishal ◽  
Jayaraj Krishnan ◽  
G. Venkatesan ◽  
V. Samson Packiaraj Raphael ◽  
Purnima Jalihal

Abstract Conventional desalination technologies like multi stage flashing, multi-effect desalination (MED) using steam as motive fluid can be made sustainable by obtaining the motive steam from solar thermal systems. In this study, a transient simulation has been performed to determine the dissimilitude in pressure drop and dryness fraction, of working fluid in absorber tube due to variation in solar irradiance. A one-dimensional (1D) mathematical model has been developed using matlab for assessing the thermal performance and heat transfer characteristics of a direct steam generating (DSG) parabolic trough collector (PTC) system. It was observed that maximum pressure drop does not occur at maximum quality indicating the working conditions impair the system performance. The developed model was used to overcome this by varying both pressure and mass flowrate of working fluid in accordance to the radiation, results indicated reduction in pressure drop during the same time period for the same exit quality.


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