Design and optimisation of elliptical hyperboloid concentrator with helical receiver

Abstract

The desalination of water is a process wherein the brackish water is purified by removing the salts. With increasing demand for fresh water, there is a vast scope for development of sea water desalination process. A number of methods exist for the desalination process, but solar desalination method promises to save energy in today’s energy crunch scenario. A novel solar desalination setup is proposed here. It uses an elliptic hyperboloid concentrator and a helical receiver along with a multi-tray desalination unit to purify water in the most effective manner. The helical receiver proposed in the present work aims at the Dean Flow effect in order to enhance heat transfer in laminar flow. The effectiveness of this property with respect to various physical parameters has been observed and an optimum design has been suggested based on this. The elliptic hyperboloid concentrator is a special design for concentrating solar radiation because of it offers to operate at high efficiency without the requirement of tracking. A detailed ray-tracing code was developed to simulate the radiation incident on the concentrator and an accurate estimation of the optical efficiency was made based on this. The two systems were integrated in order to arrive at a maximum output level for the solar desalination system as a whole.