Structure of Parabolic Trough Collector Model for Local Heating and Air Conditioning

Concentrating solar power (CSP) is a type of solar energy that uses mirrors (concentrators) to concentrate sunlight from a large area to a small area where it is absorbed and converted to heat at high temperatures. CSP plants have a big advantage over photovoltaic (PV) power plants because they can use conventional fuels and store thermal energy to make up for the fact that solar energy doesn’t always work. In this paper, a parabolic trough collector (PTC) with the following parameters was designed to investigate the efficiency of a small-scale PTC to heat a synthetic heat transfer fluid that may be used for domestic heating or cooling. PTC 2 m in length, 30 cm rim radius ( ), 23 cm for the focal length (f), while the receiver tube diameter ( ) equals 33.4 mm. It was found that the concentration ratio of the PTC was 5 times while the optical efficiency was 25 % considering all imperfections resulted from the manufacturing process. The heat losses from the PTC including convection, conduction, and radiation were calculated, and the overall heat loss coefficient was 2.8 w/ K while the PTC’s overall thermal efficiency was 24.1%. The temperature of heat transfer fluid measured by a thermocouple connected to an Arduino board showed that temperatures increased almost linearly with time. The temperature rose by 16 ℃ in five minutes from an ambient temperature of 18 ℃