Investigation of a parabolic trough solar collector utilising nanofluid and DIW: A relative study

Abstract

The conventional (Non-renewable) energy reserves are deploying progressively due to increasing population and energy requirements. Due to increasing energy demand, we need to look for the non-conventional (renewable) power reserves which consist of Energy from sun, Wind, geothermal, tides, etc. Solar Energy is one the vast available energy among these renewable energies. Solar energy applications are of outmost requirement these days due to rapid decay of conventional energy resources. Solar Collectors are one of those devices which can be employed for the solar energy utilization. In this work, nano-fluids in combination with parabolic trough solar collectors are investigated. The temperature values at dissimilar flow rates (110LPH and 160LPH) and volume concentration of (0.10% and 0.15% TiO2) were noted and compared with that of the values with water at same mass flow rates. This study has proven that the effectiveness of solar collectors can be increased by employing nanofluids.