PERFORMANCE INVESTIGATION OF PARABOLIC TROUGH SOLAR CONCENTRATOR OF A SOLAR THERMAL POWER PLANT

Abstract

There is a huge potential of solar energy available in India, given that technology routes for conversion of solar radiation into heat and electricity. Solar thermal and solar photovoltaic routes are viable to harness solar energy providing huge scalability. Solar thermal technologies are based on the concept of concentrating solar radiation to produce steam or hot air which can then be used for electricity generation using conventional power cycles. Collecting the solar energy, which has relatively low density, is one of the main engineering tasks in solar thermal power plant development. Different types of concentrating solar power technologies are available in literature and various studies have been conducted to improve efficiency of various concentrators. In order to deliver high temperatures with good efficiency a high performance solar collector is required. Based on literature survey, it has been found that parabolic trough solar technology is the most proven and low cost technology. In Parabolic trough concentrator, parabolic shaped sheets reflect the solar radiation on a linear receiver located at the focus. Systems with light structures and low cost technology for process heat applications up to 400 ˚C could be obtained with parabolic trough collectors (PTC). Under the present study, an attempt has been made to carry out an optical analysis for sizing of parabolic trough concentrator. Further the performance of the designed parabolic trough collector with hot water generation system is investigated through experiments. The maximum value of each of those parameters is observed around noon, when the incident beam radiation is at its peak. It was observed that average receiver temperature is affected by solar radiation and wind velocity at instant. Maximum fluid temperature with stainless steel receiver tube with glass cover has been found as 82.4 ˚C. Further an attempt has been made to calculate optimum tilt angle for parabolic trough for each month. An optimum tilt angle has been calculated for parabolic trough by summing up all the solar beam radiation at various tilt angles of each month. An optimum tilt angle of parabolic trough at Roorkee (latitude 29.85 ) has been found as 25˚.This study can be useful for future investigation to optimize the design under different parameter.