Performance study on eutectic molten salt as a high temperature working fluid in the parabolic trough collector

Abstract

The growth of renewable energy technologies has made remarkable changes in the engineering field. In this paper, a progressive study has been made on the Solar Parabolic Trough Collector (SPTC) using molten salt as an effective high temperature Heat Transfer Fluid (HTF). Molten salt blend is formed with 60% of sodium nitrate (NaNO3) as and 40% of potassium nitrate (KNO3) since this ratio can tackle a temperature of about 550°C. The experiment has been conducted in two phases, one with a cylindrical circular cross-section absorber tube and another with a new model tube with elliptical cross-section. The test also records outlet temperature by altering three mass flow rates of HTF, 0.014, 0.021 and 0.028 kg/s, from August 2017 to July 2018. The efficiency with the elliptical absorber is 14.5% which is higher than that of circular absorber tube while using molten salt as an HTF.