Investigation of a Compound Parabolic Collector with a Flat Glazing

Evangelos Bellos (), Dimitrios N. Korres and Christos Tzivanidis
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Evangelos Bellos: Department of Thermal Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece
Dimitrios N. Korres: Department of Thermal Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece
Christos Tzivanidis: Department of Thermal Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-17

Abstract: The compound parabolic concentrator is a promising technology for efficient solar irradiation exploitation at low- and medium-temperature levels. This collector type can be used in a series of applications, such as solar cooling, desalination, and industrial process heat applications. This work presents a novel compound parabolic concentrator that presents satisfying efficiency and low cost due to the use of flat glazing and not an evacuated tube receiver. More specifically, the goal of the present investigation is based on the energy and exergy analysis of a compound parabolic collector with flat glazing, which has a concentration ratio of 2.81. The collector is examined thermally and exegetically, aiming to calculate the efficiency of different operating inlet temperatures. Moreover, the solar unit is studied by a developed computational fluid dynamics model in the SolidWorks Flow Simulation tool. Emphasis is given to the calculation of the convection losses of the receiver tube with the internal air inside the collector. The heat convection coefficient is calculated, and the distribution of the thermal losses, convection, and radiation is presented. Furthermore, the temperature levels of the absorber, the cover glass, and the top thermal loss coefficient are found. The thermal efficiency of the solar unit was 77.4% for inlet temperature at 10 °C and 32.6% for inlet temperature at 110 °C. It was calculated that the maximum exergetic performance of the solar unit is 10.19% for operation at 90 °C, while the thermal efficiency for this case is 41.57%. Additionally, the temperature distributions for different cases are included in the present work.

Keywords: low concentration; compound parabolic collector; thermal efficiency; exergy efficiency; energy analysis; solar collector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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