Experimental studies on the thermal performance of a parabolic dish solar receiver with the heat transfer fluids SiC + water nano fluid and water

An experimental investigation has been carried out with aa point focusing dish reflector of 12 square meters aperture area, exposed to the average direct normal irradiations of 810 W/m2. This work focuses on enhancinge the energy and exergy efficiencies of the cavity receiver by minimizing the temperature difference between the wall and heat transfer fluids. Two heat transfer fluids Water and SiC + water nano fluid have been prepared from 50 nm particle size and 1% of volume fraction, and experimented separately for the flow rates of 0.2 lpm to 0.6 lpm with an interval of 0.1 lpm. The enhanced thermal conductivity of nano fluid is 0.800115 W/mK with the keff /kb ratio of 1.1759 determined by using the Koo and Kleinstreuer correlation. The maximum attained energy and exergy efficiencies are 29.14% and 24.82% for water, and 32.91% and 39.83% for SiC+water nano fluid. The nano fluid exhibits enhanced energy and exergy efficiency of 12.94% and 60.48% than that of water at the flow rate of 0.5 lpm. The result shows that the system with SiC+Water produces higher exergy efficiency as compared to energy efficiency; in the case of water alone, the energy efficiency is higher than exergy efficiency.