Abstract
A novel gravity-based power-free solar tracking mechanism has been developed to track a linear solar concentrating collector. Multireflector compound parabolic collectors having three parabolic segments and two flat surfaces is chosen due to its high intercept factor and suitability to the current tracking. The working of tracking mechanism is studied to find the tracking loads in the east and the west sides of collector. A generalized mathematical model is derived to simulate the tracking motion from the sunrise to sunset. The identified design variants are sprocket wheel diameter, spring stiffness, solar collector’s weight, counter balance, and tracking wheel radius. The spring length is derived from the constraints. To make a compact product, the tracking load has been minimized at large sprocket wheel, low stiff spring, lighter collector weight, and small radius of tracking. For a typical collector load of 50 kg, the designed tracking load is 50 kg with 620 mm spring length, 250 mm of sprocket wheel diameter and 60 mm tracking radius.
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Schedule a callMore From: Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science
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