Numerical Study of Porous Finned Receiver for Solar Parabolic Trough Concentrator

Abstract

In this article a new receiver for parabolic trough concentrator is proposed to enhance heat transfer. A 3-D numerical model is developed to evaluate the performance of the receiver with various configurations of porous inserts of square, triangular, trapezoidal and circular shapes. The model is solved by k-ε RNG with standard wall function approach using the CFD package FLUENT. The performance of the receiver is investigated under various solar radiation and heat loss conditions. The effect of porous fin geometry on heat transfer characteristics and pressure drop is studied. The trapezoidal fin receiver with a tip-to-base ratio (λ) = 0.25 showed better performance than other receiver configurations. The trapezoidal porous inserts in the tubular receiver of the solar trough concentrator enhanced the heat transfer for about 13.8% at a fluid mass flow rate of 6.4 kg/s with only 1.7 kPa of pressure penalty.