Heat Transfer Studies on Solar Parabolic trough Collector Using Corrugated Tube Receiver with Conical Strip Inserts

Ramalingam Venkatesaperumal (), Kutbudeen Syed Jafar, Perumal Venkatesan Elumalai, Mohamed Abbas, Erdem Cuce (), Saboor Shaik and Chanduveetil Ahamed Saleel
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Ramalingam Venkatesaperumal: Department of Mechanical Engineering, FEAT Annamalai University, Annamalainagar 608002, India
Kutbudeen Syed Jafar: Department of Mechanical Engineering, FEAT Annamalai University, Annamalainagar 608002, India
Perumal Venkatesan Elumalai: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aditya Engineering College, Surampalem 533437, India
Mohamed Abbas: Electrical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King Khalid University, Abha 61421, Saudi Arabia
Erdem Cuce: Low/Zero Carbon Energy Technologies Laboratory, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, ZihniDerin Campus, Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, Rize 53100, Turkey
Saboor Shaik: School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore 632014, India
Chanduveetil Ahamed Saleel: Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, King Khalid University, P.O. Box 394, Abha 61421, Saudi Arabia

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: The heat transfer characteristics of the working fluid passing through the absorber of a solar parabolic trough collector (SPTC) can be enhanced by the creation of a turbulence effect. Therefore, a novel idea was implemented by introducing a corrugated tube (CT) absorber instead of a plain tube absorber in a solar parabolic trough collector. The heat transfer enhancement was improved further through the use of conical strip inserts inside the corrugated tube absorber of the SPTC. A corrugated tube (CT) receiver with a pitch of 8 mm and corrugation height of 2 mm was used with three different pitches of conical strip inserts (pitch pi = 20 mm, 30 mm and 50 mm) for the analysis of the thermal performance of the SPTC. Initially, experiments were conducted in a plain tube and corrugated tube receiver at different mass flow rates. The convective heat transfer rate was increased for all the configurations of the conical strip inserts. The SPTC performance was good for the combination of the corrugated tube (pc = 8 mm and hc = 2 mm) and the conical strip insert I3 (pi= 20 mm). The experimental results showed that the maximum achieved Nu value, friction factor, instantaneous efficiency and thermal efficiency of the CT-I3 were 177%, 38%, 26.92% and 9% compared to the plain tube under the same working conditions.

Keywords: solar parabolic trough collector; plain tube receiver; corrugated tube receiver; transient flow; conical strip inserts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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