The effect and contribution of wind generated rotation on outlet temperature and heat gain of LS-2 parabolic trough solar collector

Abstract

The Monte Carlo ray tracing method is applied and coupled with finite volume numerical methods to study effect of rotation on outlet temperature and heat gain of LS-2 parabolic trough concentrator. Based on effect of sun-shape, curve of mirror and use of Monte Carlo ray tracing, heat flux distribution around of inner wall of evacuated tube is calculated. After calculation of heat flux, the geometry of LS-2 Luz collector is created and finite volume method is applied to simulate. To validate these numerical solving models, the obtained results were compared with Dudley et al. test results for irrotational cases and with Ball's results. In this work, according to the structure of mentioned collector, we use plug as a flow restriction. In the rotational case studies, the inner wall rotates with different angular speeds. We compare results of rotational collector with irrotational. Also for these two main states, the location of plug changed then outlet temperature and heat gain of collector are studied. The results show that rotation have positive role on heat transfer processing and the rotational plug in bottom half of tube have better effectual than upper half of tube. Also the contribution of rotation is calculated in the all of case studies. Working fluid of these study is one of the oil derivatives namely Syltherm-800. The power of wind can be used to rotate tube of collector.