Daily, monthly and yearly performance of a linear Fresnel reflector

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to investigate the daily performance of a linear Fresnel reflector in energetic and exergetic terms. The collector is designed and examined in SolidWorks Flow Simulation in order to obtain the optical and thermal efficiency curves. These data are inserted in a developed numerical dynamic model for the prediction of the daily performance of the solar collector which is coupled to a storage tank. The collector has total aperture 27 m2, concentration ratio 20.46 and the storage tank volume is 3 m3. The system is investigated for twelve typical days, one for each month, and its yearly performance is determined by taking into consideration only the sunny days of every month. According to the final results, the mean yearly incident angle modifier is found to be 37% while the maximum yearly exergy efficiency is 8.0% when the system starts with 450 K inlet temperature at the morning. For this case, the mean yearly thermal efficiency is found to be 18.5% and also June is the month with the highest thermal and exergy outputs. Furthermore, it is important to state that the mean daily incident angle modifier is found to be the 81% of the maximum daily incident angle modifier for all the months.