Experimental and numerical investigation of a triple-dish solar concentrator: a thermal and exergy study Online publication date: Fri, 13-Jul-2018
by Evangelos Bellos; Sasa R. Pavlovic; Darko Vasiljević; Velimir P. Stefanovic; Christos Tzivanidis
International Journal of Exergy (IJEX), Vol. 26, No. 4, 2018
Abstract: The objective of this study is to investigate an innovative concentrating collector experimentally and numerically. This solar collector has three dish reflectors and a spiral-coil absorber. This configuration is innovative, combining a compact design which can be manufactured with low cost. The numerical analysis is performed with SolidWorks Flow Simulation. The developed model in SolidWorks is validated with the obtained experimental results and after this step, the solar collector is examined energetically and exergetically under various operating temperatures. According to the final results, the system can reach a thermal efficiency close to 32%, a relatively low value which is explained by the low reflectance of the experimental setup. The system exergetic efficiency reaches up to 8.3%, for inlet temperature close to 90oC. The detailed exergetic analysis proved the low exergy efficiency is explained by the high optical exergy loss and the high exergy destruction between sun and receiver.
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