Full analytical formulation for Dielectric Totally Internally Reflecting Concentrators designs and solar applications

O.H. Cruz-Silva, O.A. Jaramillo and Mónica Borunda

Renewable Energy, 2017, vol. 101, issue C, 804-815

Abstract: Over the last years many efforts have been focused to develop concentrated solar energy technologies. On the other hand, nonimaging optical devices such as Dielectric Totally Internally Reflecting Concentrators (DTIRCs) stand out for their high concentration and homogeneous radiant flux on the spot of the receiver of the concentrator. In this work we reformulate the original formulation of DTIRCs to obtain an analytical framework for feasible designs which are easily implemented for computer numerical control (CNC) manufacturing. Additionally we extend the formulation to aspherical front surfaces, such as Parabolic Dielectric Totally Internally Reflecting Concentrators (PDTIRC) and Elliptic Dielectric Totally Internally Reflecting Concentrators (EDTIRCs), and discuss their most relevant features for concentrated solar applications. It turns out that DTIRC devices are attractive candidates for solar concentration technology since they provide high concentration without solar tracking. In particular, we present two case studies of two stage concentrator devices. We analyse the solar flux distribution in a linear Fresnel reflector and a parabolic trough collector with a DTIRC as secondary concentrator.

Keywords: Solar concentrators; Concentrated solar energy; Nonimaging optics; Dielectric solar concentrators; Secondary concentrators (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116308254
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:renene:v:101:y:2017:i:c:p:804-815

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2016.09.037

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

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