Numerical Comparison of Elliptical and Conical Cavity Receiver of Solar Parabolic Dish Collector System

Abstract

The solar parabolic dish collector system is ace of the concentrated solar power technologies. It attracts researchers all around the globe because of its higher thermal conversion efficiency. The cavity receivers play a major role in bettering the overall solar collector efficiency by reducing the heat losses. With minimum heat losses, the employment of the concentrated power increases. This current study compares two types of cavity receivers such as elliptical and conical through numerical simulations and determines the heat loss coefficient. The combinations of various parameters such as temperature (673 K, 773 K, 873 K, 973 K, and 1073 K), orientation (0°, 30°, 45°, 60°, and 90°), and aspect ratio (1.5, 1.75, 2.0, 2.25, 2.5) of the cavity receivers were considered for the simulation. The conical cavity receiver has less heat loss coefficient than the elliptical cavity receiver. Among the different combinations of parameters, the heat loss at 0° inclination of conical cavity receiver is 31% less than at 90° for 673 K and others.