COMPUTATIONAL INVESTIGATION OF GLASS TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION IN PARABOLIC TROUGH SOLAR COLLECTOR RELATING TO HUMID CONDITIONS

Abstract

The current work investigates the effect of humid conditions on the glass cover temperature distribution of the parabolic trough solar collector system. For the aforementioned work, a two-dimensional computational model was created and numerically examined. The simulation regime was split into two sections. The first section established the impact of moist flow and ambient temperature on the heat transfer coefficient over a cylinder with a uniform circumferential temperature distribution. The temperature distribution of the glass cover of a parabolic trough solar collector with moist airflow running across it was determined in the second step of the simulation. Studies on the temperature of the glass cover have also looked at the impact of wind speed. When the relative humidity was varied from 0 to 100%, the circumferential peak temperature decreased by 3.69, 2.9, and 1.68 K for 1, 3, and 5 m/s, respectively. Studies were also done on the impact of wind speed. When wind speed is raised from 1 to 5 m/s while relative humidity is maintained at 0 and 100%, respectively, the circumferential peak temperature decreases by 6.02 and 5.17 K, respectively.