THE RECENT TRENDS IN OPTIMIZATION OF THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF PARABOLIC TROUGH SOLAR COLLECTOR

The concentrated solar collectors are attractive to the solar community to meet the most of the energy requirements when compared to other renewable sources of energy. Especially, parabolic trough and dish solar collectors are capable of supplying the heat and electricity for the domestic and industrial needs. Both the collectors are operating at different concentration ratios. The increased concentration ratio of parabolic dish collectors is producing higher temperatures. However, the plant level applications utilize the parabolic trough collectors. Various optimization techniques and methods are adopted to utilize the parabolic solar collectors effectively. The most efficient method is the integration of multiple applications to the solar systems. The recent trends in the optimization methods are discussed in this article.