Design, optimization and comparative study of a solar CPC with a fully illuminated tubular receiver and a fin inverted V-shaped receiver

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This work presents the design, optimization, and a comparative study of a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) using a tube as a receiver with and without a fin inverted V-shaped receiver (finned receiver). The study was mainly based on numerical analysis obtained by using a ray-tracing simulator in CPCs, in order to evaluate the amount of solar irradiation collected on four dates of the year.A north-south orientation was chosen, with and without a solar tracking system, at a fixed tilt angle of 32 and 0° for each case. The results showed that a CPC using a tubular receiver with a solar tracking system and a surface tilt of 32 and 0° reaches solar irradiation levels of27.96 and 25.35 kWh/m2, while a CPC with a finned receiver reaches 26.87 and 24.98 kWh/m2, respectively. In the case of arrangements without a solar tracking system, the values reached were 7.03 and 5.60 kWh/m2for tubular receiver and 16.83 and 12.85 kWh/m2for the finned receiver, respectively. CPC with a tubular receiver proved to be more feasible when using a solar tracking system, in contrast to a CPC with a finned receiver, which had better feasibility in arrangements that do not include solar tracking.