CPC thermal collector test plan

A comprehensive set of test procedures has evolved at Argonne National Laboratory for establishing the performance of compound parabolic and related concentrating thermal collectors with large angular fields of view. The procedures range from separate thermal and optical tests, to overall performance tests. A calorimetric ratio technique has been developed to determine the heat output of a collector without knowledge of the heat transfer fluid's mass flow rate and heat capacity. Sepcial attention is paid to the problem of defining and measuring the incident solar flux with respect to which the collector efficiency is to be calculated