Evaluation of Heat Flux Distribution Characteristics of a Concentrated Solar Dish Collector with different geometric indices

Abstract

The concentrated solar dish collector is a promising technology for generating both electricity and thermal energy together and it is termed as concentrated photovoltaic thermal. The important component of the parabolic dish collector is the absorber; where all concentrated lights are falling. The present paper has investigated the heat flux distribution characteristics of the flat plate absorber based solar dish collector by using the ray-tracing simulations. In concentrating dish collector, rim angle and dish diameter are significant factor of the flux distributions. The present study reported the average heat flux distribution, maximum flux intensity and non-uniformity of flux distribution for different geometrical conditions. The maximum heat flux rate attains the rim angle between 35 to 55° for any dish diameter. Where the peak flux intensity raises concerning raises of rim angle and peak flux occurred at rim angle 90°. The increase of heat flux intensity causes the non-uniformity of heat flux distribution over the absorber surface. The non-uniformity factor is mainly influenced by the rim angle, not a dish diameter. When rim angle 15 & 75°, the non-uniformity is 2.5 & 10 respectively for whichever dish diameters. A critical rim angle produces the non-uniformity factor. Results shows that optimization of rim angle is a significant contribution for decreasing the non-uniformity index of concentrator; it most valuable for coupled thermal and electricity generating applications.