Experimental Investigation of the Influence of Longitudinal Tilt Angles on the Thermal Performance of a Small-Scale Linear Fresnel Reflector

Abstract

This paper analyses the influence of the longitudinal tilt angle of the secondary system of a low-concentration photovoltaic system based on a small-scale linear Fresnel reflector. Several evaluation indicators, such as useful heat gain, thermal efficiency, incident solar irradiance gain on the photovoltaic cells, and total useful energy gain, were evaluated for five wind speed conditions and six locations in the Northern Hemisphere. The tests were performed with two small-scale linear Fresnel reflector configurations: the classical large-scale linear Fresnel reflector configuration (base configuration) and the optimal longitudinal tilt angle configuration (longitudinal tilt configuration). An experimental platform based on an open-loop wind tunnel was designed and built for this purpose. As far as useful heat production, the longitudinal tilt configuration performs worse as the longitudinal tilt angle and wind speed increase. A useful heat gain 33.91% lower than the base configuration is obtained with a wind speed of 10.03 (m/s) at the 36.86 (°) latitude location. Thermal efficiency decreases with increasing wind speed and longitudinal tilt angle. The thermal efficiency is between 0.3 and 0.2 with wind speeds of 4.99 (m/s) and 10.03 (m/s). The longitudinal tilt configuration shows the best increase in total useful energy gain in the absence of wind (up to 53% at a latitude of 36.86 (°)). This increase is 25% at this same location with a wind speed of 10.03 (m/s). It can be concluded that the effect of the longitudinal tilt of the secondary system has a positive effect. To highlight the importance of this work, the results obtained in the configuration comparison were used to compare a nonconcentrating photovoltaic system and a low-concentration photovoltaic system. The incident solar irradiance on the photovoltaic cells is much higher with nonconcentrating photovoltaic technology. This solar irradiance gain is over 60% for the base configuration and 45% for the longitudinal tilt configuration. The total useful energy gain is 70% in the absence of wind and at the 36.86 (°) latitude location in favour of the low-concentration photovoltaic system. The nonconcentrating photovoltaic system performs better with a wind speed of 10.03 (m/s).