A detailed thermal model of a parabolic trough collector receiver

Soteris A. Kalogirou

Energy, 2012, vol. 48, issue 1, 298-306

Abstract: Parabolic trough collectors are made by bending a sheet of reflective material into a parabolic shape. A metal black pipe, covered with a glass tube to reduce heat losses, is placed along the focal line of the collector. The concentrated radiation reaching the receiver tube heats the fluid that circulates through it, thus transforming the solar radiation into useful heat. It is sufficient to use a single axis tracking of the sun and thus long collector modules are produced. In this paper a detailed thermal model of a parabolic trough collector is presented. The thermal analysis of the collector receiver takes into consideration all modes of heat transfer; convection into the receiver pipe, in the annulus between the receiver and the glass cover, and from the glass cover to ambient air; conduction through the metal receiver pipe and glass cover walls; and radiation from the metal receiver pipe and glass cover surfaces to the glass cover and the sky respectively. The model is written in the Engineering Equation Solver (EES) and is validated with known performance of existing collectors and subsequently is used to perform an analysis of the collector we are going to install at Archimedes Solar Energy Laboratory at the Cyprus University of Technology.

Keywords: Parabolic trough; Heat loss; Conduction; Convection radiation; Receiver thermal performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (65)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544212004744
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:energy:v:48:y:2012:i:1:p:298-306

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2012.06.023

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

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