Laboratory Heat Loss Measurements of Parabolic Trough Receivers based on Transient Thermography

The aim of this work is to develop and optimize the transient thermography method under laboratory conditions. Therefore various PTR samples with different properties have to be tested. The PTRs are first heated with sinusoidal thermal excitations, which can only be applied under laboratory conditions. These measurements are a reference for later comparison. The same PTR samples are then heated with non-periodical transient thermal excitations, which could be potentially reproduced under field conditions. Finally, an experimental uncertainty analysis is performed