Ray Tracing and Simulation of Parabolic Dish Collectorusing Soltrace for Vehicle Applications

Abstract

Concentrated solar power has the potential to produce large-scale renewable energy sources. Concentrated solar energy is produced using mirrors, reflective materials, or lenses on conical surfaces such as a parabolic dishes, parabolic troughs, towers, Fresnel reflector systems, and dish sterling collectors. The concentrated light source was converted into heat energy, which drove the heat engine into an electrical power generator. To gain more heat energy, the solar rays must be trapped and concentrated on their conical focus points. To increase the net overall efficiency of the system, it is vital to know the optical performances of the subsystem formed by the solar receiver and the parabolic concentrator. In this study, a beam of incident solar rays was traced on a parabolic dish collector, and a simulation is performed for concentrator behaviour using the ray-tracing code SolTrace developed by the NREL laboratory. For an incident radiation of 1000 W/m2 (considering 10000 photon rays), their optical performance and solar heat flux were simulated. The results show that the number of elements in SolTrace varies depending on the CFD mesh density, the number of rays utilised in the Monte Carlo technique and their impact on generating a resolution-independent solution. Investigating the ray tracing of the disc concentrator, the propulsive energy for viable applications can be analysed.