ENERGY ANALYSIS AND PERFORMANCE OF A PARABOLIC CYLINDRICAL SOLAR COLLECTOR AIDED BY SOLAR TRACKING SYSTEM

Abstract

Over the last few years, countries such as Brazil, the United States, Germany, and China have been receiving significant investments to advance the use of renewable energy sources, such as solar energy, biomass and wind. This has been due to the growing demand for electricity due to population increase and the evolution of industrial activities. Solar energy can be enjoyed by using solar concentrators that are commonly used in solar thermal systems where the working fluid reaches higher temperatures than can be obtained from other collectors. These concentrators are responsible for providing the thermal energy supply. This research analyzed the energy influence of Parabolic Solar Concentrator technology aided by a solar tracking system, taking into account its energy balance and thermal efficiency calculation. The concentrator had an optical efficiency of 81 % and was able to achieve average thermal efficiency values between 21.8 % and 24.7 % under maximum solar radiation conditions between 900 W/m² and 990 W/m². The temperature of the absorber tube used to receive the concentration of sunlight reached temperatures between 80 °C and 98.6 °C, allowing the system working fluid a temperature to reach values above 100 °C. These results show the ability of this type of solar collector to provide power for thermal applications such as heating water for industrial or domestic processes, food dehydration, and drying, refrigeration, thermal desalination and microgeneration of electricity. Besides, the thermal efficiency (between 21.8 % and 24.7 %) was satisfactory when considering the type of concentrator, which also validates the electronic tracking system as it was able to track the relative movement of the sun and favor the increase of thermal efficiency of the system.