Experimental Study of the Performance of Compound Parabolic Concentrating Solar Collector
PDF

Keywords

CPC collector
truncation effect
thermal performance

How to Cite

Experimental Study of the Performance of Compound Parabolic Concentrating Solar Collector. (2016). Al-Khwarizmi Engineering Journal, 12(1), 15-25. https://alkej.uobaghdad.edu.iq/index.php/alkej/article/view/280

Publication Dates

Abstract

The design, construction and investigation of experimental study of two compound parabolic concentrators (CPCs) with tubular absorber have been presented. The performance of CPCs have been evaluated by using outdoor experimental measurements including the instantaneous thermal efficiency. The two CPCs are tested instantly by holding them on a common structure. Many tests are conducted in the present work by truncating one of them in three different levels. For each truncation the acceptance half angle (θc) was changed. Geometrically, the acceptance half angle for standard CPC is (26o). For the truncation levels for the other CPC 1, 2 and 3 the acceptance half angle were 20o, 26o and 59o, consequently. A significant difference between the instantaneous thermal efficiency of 3.86× CPC (θc=20o) and 2.32× CPC (θc=26o), and between that for 3.61× CPC (θc=26o) and 2.32× CPC (θc=26o). It's noticed that the difference between the instantaneous thermal efficiency of 2.32× CPC (θc=59o) and 2.32× CPC (θc=26o) is small compared with the difference of the first and second cases, the instantaneous thermal efficiency of 2.32× CPC (26o) was higher than those for other three CPCs. The experimental results show that the maximum thermal efficiency of the full 2.32×CPC (26o) is 0.708, the maximum thermal efficiency of the 3.93×CPC (15o), when it's truncated to 3.84× CPC (20o), 3.61× CPC (26o) and 2.32× CPC (59o)  are 0.51, 0.52 and 0.66, respectively. As the concentration ratio decreases from (3.93× to 1×), the thermal efficiency, energy losses and optical efficiency increase from (0.47 to 63), (1.58 to 7.2 K.m2/W) and (0.494 to 0.797), respectively.

PDF

Copyright: Open Access authors retain the copyrights of their papers, and all open access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations. While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.