Optical and thermal performance of a three-dimensional compound parabolic concentrator for spherical absorber

For medium range temperature applications, focusing type collectors like Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC) are most commonly used. Considerable research work has been carried out to improve the performance of the two-dimensional compound parabolic concentrator (2D CPC). The three-dimensional compound parabolic concentrator (3D) CPC) was found to be more efficient than 2D CPC because of the higher concentration ratio. In the present work a 3D CPC was fabricated with a half acceptance angle of 4 degrees for a spherical absorber of radius 100 mm. UV stabilized aluminized polyester foil having high reflectivity (0.85) was pasted on the reflector for a total height of 441 mm and an aperture width of 540 mm. The optical efficiency was estimated theoretically and compared with the experimental value. Experimentally determined values of optical and thermal efficiencies were in good agreement with theoretically predicted value. The experimental results shown that the optical efficiency obtained from the 3D CPC (0.626) was significantly higher than that of the 2D CPC (0.570) of similar dimensions. Since the optical efficiency of the 3D CPC was increased, the thermal efficiency of the collector was also increased. In addition to that, time constant of the concentrator was also calculated. The time constant of the 3D CPC (431 s) was fairly high when compared with the 2D CPC (110 s). An attempt was made to generate low pressure steam using 3D CPC in the in situ steam generation mode. The efficiency of the steam generation was about 38%, which was one of the possible applications of 3D CPC module.