High concentration parabolic trough solar collector with novel secondary reflector in the vacuum receiver

In this research work, the performance of novel secondary concentrator in the vacuum receiver of the parabolic trough collector is investigated. The secondary concentrator is designed, the optical and thermal performance analysis is done analytically and validated numerically by using Finite Element Analysis based computational software. From the initial optical and thermal modeling, it is found that the use of secondary reflector gives the concentration of 53X against the concentration in 20's X of conventional trough collectors, the optical efficiency of 75% and the thermal efficiency of 60% at 650oC. After the design and analysis, the secondary concentrator is formed to the shape and photogrammetry technique is adopted to validate the optical simulations. In future work, the secondary concentrator and selective coated absorber will be produced and will be packaged inside the vacuum receiver. The installation, testing and commissioning of the full system two-stage concentration parabolic trough collector with novel secondary concentrator will be performed at University of California Merced in 2020.