Nanofluids in Linear Fresnel Reflector

Abstract

Linear Fresnel reflector (LFR) is a linear concentrating technology that can operate with an optical concentration ratio from 10 up to 50. Usually, the LFR is compared with the parabolic trough collector (PTC) because these are two competitive linear concentrating technologies. The LFR presents important optical losses due to their simple design, and thus they present lower optical and thermal efficiency than PTC. The solar thermal concentrating collector produces useful heat which is gained by the temperature increase of the working fluid. The nanofluids are new working fluids with improved thermal properties in order to aid in the proper heat transfer to the working fluid. The most usual nanofluids have water or thermal oil as the base fluid. The first study with a nanofluid-based LFR has been conducted by Bellos and Tzivanidis. They studied an LFR with a concentration ratio of 58 with a compound parabolic secondary concentrator.