Thermal Analysis of a Compound Parabolic Collector

Solar energy is a proven, yet underdeveloped, clean energy resource. In the last few decades, considerable research has gone to lower the cost of its production and improve the efficiency of standard solar collectors such as concentrating collectors. A Compound Parabolic Collector is a non imaging Concentrator. It is easy to fabricate, operate and cost is low compared to other available concentrating collector systems. The Compound Parabolic Collectors are used in this analysis as a non-imaging concentrator whose axes are inclined to each other. Its two parabolic segments above the focal point are removed and those below the focal point were selected. The length of the collector is 1m and having an aperture width of 0.96m. The receiver pipe inner diameter is 0.0381m. The collector selected is aimed to withstand a steam temperature of 150 o C. In this thesis the performance analysis of a compound parabolic collector is evaluated. And a comparison of its performance is drawn between two Indian cites Visakhapatnam and Mumbai by taking the solar radiation data from the Indian Meteorological Department for the two cities. The performance evaluation of the system shows potential of improving the thermal efficiency up to 75%. From the obtained results, graphs are drawn to assess the performance of the compound parabolic collector.