Title: Experimental and numerical investigation of a triple-dish solar concentrator: a thermal and exergy study

Authors: Evangelos Bellos; Sasa R. Pavlovic; Darko Vasiljević; Velimir P. Stefanovic; Christos Tzivanidis

Addresses: Thermal Department, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Heroon Polytehniou 9, 157 73 Zografou, Athens, Greece ' Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Energetics and Process Technique, University in Niš, Aleksandra Medvedeva 14, 18000 Niš, Serbia ' Photonics Center, Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade, 11080 Belgrade, Serbia ' Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Energetics and Process technique, University in Niš, Aleksandra Medvedeva 14, 18000 Niš, Serbia ' Thermal Department, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Heroon Polytehniou 9, 157 73 Zografou, Athens, Greece

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 90^oC. 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.

Keywords: triple dish reflector; thermal analysis; exergy analysis; SolidWorks flow simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEX.2018.093191

International Journal of Exergy, 2018 Vol.26 No.4, pp.481 - 501

Received: 01 Sep 2017
Accepted: 18 Feb 2018
Published online: 13 Jul 2018 *

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