A novel parabolic trough receiver enhanced by integrating a transparent aerogel and wing-like mirrors

Yu Qiu, Yuanting Zhang, Qing Li, Yucong Xu and Zhe-Xi Wen

Applied Energy, 2020, vol. 279, issue C, No S0306261920312903

Abstract: In this paper, a novel evacuated receiver was proposed to improve the efficiency of the parabolic trough collector. In this receiver, a solar-transparent aerogel supported by a glass support was employed to insulate the absorber in the directly illumined vacuum zone, and wing-like mirrors on the support were designed to collect some irradiance wasted in the conventional receiver. An optical model developed using ray tracing and a heat transfer model developed using computational fluid dynamics were employed to study the receiver performance. Firstly, optical study indicates the receiver optical efficiency first increases then decreases with increasing aerogel thickness due to the combined effects of the aerogel and the mirrors. The peak receiver optical efficiency of 89.56% is achieved when the aerogel thickness is 20 mm. Moreover, thermal study indicates the receiver thermal efficiency just monotonically increases with increasing aerogel thickness before the aerogel touches the absorber. Then, the receiver with the aerogel thickness of 20 mm was selected as the suggested design after considering both the efficiencies and the safety requirements. Finally, performance evaluation reveals that the suggested receiver can improve the receiver efficiency at any direct normal irradiance or fluid temperature compared with the conventional receiver, which is the originality of this work. It is found the receiver efficiency can be improved by 0.32–5.04% under the typical direct normal irradiance of 300–1000 W·m−2 and the inlet fluid temperature of 573–823 K. Results from present study are beneficial for improving the performance of the parabolic trough collector.

Keywords: Improving efficiency; Parabolic trough collector; Transparent aerogel; Wing-like mirror; Novel evacuated receiver (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261920312903
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:279:y:2020:i:c:s0306261920312903

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115810

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().