Numerical study of mixed convection for different concentrations of a parabolic trough collector and experimental determination of temperatures (case study for winter climatic conditions)

ABSTRACT

In this paper, a numerical study has been performed using FLUENT to investigate the thermal behaviour of a parabolic trough solar receiver with different concentrations. In order to confirm the viability of our study, the model has been validated with experimental data. The obtained results show that the concentration of C = 70 gives the best heat exchange between the receiver’s wall and the heat transfer fluid at the bottom of the receiver, while the concentration of C = 17 gives the best heat exchange at the top of the receiver. On the other side, the experimental study has been done under real climatic conditions of Ghardaia (South of Algeria) in order to study the variations of different temperatures in the solar receiver of the concentrator with the best concentration.

KEYWORDS:

• Concentration
• Ghardaia
• parabolic trough
• receiver

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr T. E. Boukelia for his valuable comments and corrections, in addition to Mr M. Tichouchai for helping us to draft the manuscript. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for his comments, which improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.