EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF A SOLAR PARABOLIC TROUGH COLLECTOR

In this study, an experimental analysis of a small-sized solar parabolic trough collector (PTC) has been done to investigate its performance. A PTC system with 4.075 m2 aperture area was evaluated in this paper. The experimental setup is made up of stainless steel reflector. The performance of PTC was investigated in two parts. In the first part, performance investigation was done by using copper and stainlesssteel (1-inch diameter) as receiver tube material at different mass flow rates. In the second part, a comparison was done using bare receiver tube and receiver tube (0.5- inch) covered with acrylic cover at different mass flow rates. Both the cases were studied by using water as the heat transfer fluid. This study was conducted for finding out the better combination of receiver tube, receiver tube material, diameter of receiver tube and mass flow rate. From first analysis, it was observed that the copper receiver tube is showing better performance at both the mass flow rates 0.01 kg/s and 0.02 kg/s in comparison of stainless steel tube. The maximum thermal efficiency of 35.9% is obtained in case of a copper receiver at 0.01 kg/s mass flow rate. From the second analysis, it was observed that receiver tube with acrylic cover is showing better performance than a bare tube. The maximum thermal efficiency of 61.4% was obtained in case of a receiver with an acrylic tube.