Experimental investigation on performance of a light weight solar receiver of a parabolic dish concentrator

Abstract

Abstract The need to extract maximum energy from renewable resources has become quite significant in day-to-day life. Solar energy is an essential source to meet the ever-increasing demand for energy today and the potential ways are to use efficient solar dish concentrators. In the present work, an external type solar receiver in the form of spiral tube is developed with mild steel material and tested with Scheffler type parabolic dish concentrator. The experimental performance analysis is performed in the real atmospheric conditions and the energy efficiency of the receiver in open loop circulation mode is studied for a whole day. Water is used as the heat transferring fluid with 2 LPM as the flow rate. The receiver showed an average thermal energy efficiency of 43.7% with a peak value of 47% during a sunny day with average beam radiation of 743 W/m2 for a HTF flow rate of 2 LPM. The result shows that this receiver has potential to be used in the solar powered process heating application in the temperature range 30°C to 100°C.