Numerical analysis of the heat transfer behaviour of a wickless heat pipe receiver for parabolic trough solar collectors

Abstract

The thermal performance of a wickless heat pipe receiver for parabolic trough solar collector applications is investigated in this study. For three filling ratios of 30%, 50%, and 90%, nine different heat flux profiles were examined. The normal heat flux range was chosen to be between 58 and 288 W/m². The influence of the non-homogeneity of the thermal flux on the receiver tube was numerically analysed for various filling ratios. The maximum average wall temperature of 390 K was observed for heat transfer profile 7 and a fill ratio of 30%. For a filling ratio of 90%, the heat flux profile 7 had a minimum thermal resistance of 0.245 K/W, and a correlation was proposed to calculate the thermal resistance. A maximum thermal resistance of 1.722 K/W was calculated for the heat flux profile 3 and a filling ratio of 30%.

KEYWORDS:

• Nonuniform heat flux
• phase change
• thermal resistance
• three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics
• wickless heat pipe receiver

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).