Optical and Thermal Performance of a Parabolic Trough Collector for Different Receiver Geometries

This paper numerically and theoretically investigates the optical and thermal performance of a parabolic trough collector PTC system. Many numerical simulations and theoretical analyses are conducted to demonstrate the influence of the receiver geometry and shifting from the focal position on the optical performance. The examined receiver geometries are circular, square, triangular, elliptical, and the new circular-square combined geometry is named as channel receiver. The thermal performance of PTC is examined for different volume flow rates theoretically in the range of (0.36 to 2.4 lpm). The results show that the best optical design is the channel receiver with an intercept factor of 84%, while the worst is the elliptical receiver with an intercept factor of 70%. Thermally the best design is the elliptical receiver with an average thermal efficiency of 90%, while the worst is the triangular receiver with an average thermal efficiency of 83%.