Model building and optical performance analysis on a novel designed compound parabolic concentrator

Abstract

This paper proposed a novel designed compound parabolic concentrator with Synchronous improvement in original acceptance angle and concentration ratio (IAR-CPC) for circular absorber used in solar system. The surface structure model of IAR-CPC and its mathematical solutions are constructed via theory with the principle of edge-rays on concentrating sunlight. The optical paths of the established IAR-CPC on concentrating rays are verified through a laser experiment. Subsequently, the optical concentrating performance of designed IAR-CPC is analyzed and compared with standard compound parabolic concentrator (S-CPC) according to the numerical calculation and Monte Carlo Ray-Trace. It is found that the improvement ratios of IAR-CPC on average optical efficiency and original acceptance angle are 4.32% and 17.56% respectively in comparison to S-CPC under the condition with the same aperture width, absorber sizes and material characteristics. Compared with S-CPC, it has the great significance that the surface structure of IAR-CPC has preferable flexibility and better uniform of flux density distribution on absorber surface. Numerical calculations for the optical characteristics of the constructed system are performed. The results show that the total radiation collected by IAR-CPC system is higher than that of S-CPC system, and the average increase ratio is 1.57%.