Evaluation of energy and exergy of a parabolic trough solar collector equipped with internal fin and star turbulator absorber tube

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Farhad Vahidinia

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran

10.22067/jacsm.2023.83484.1199

Abstract

In this paper, the energy and exergy performance of a parabolic trough solar collector containing thermal oil with a receiver equipped with an internal fin and a star shaped turbulator is numerically studied. The fluid flow inside the absorber tube of the collector is turbulent and the Reynolds number is considered in the range of 2×104 to 105. Ansys-Fluent software was used to simulate the fluid flow. In this study, a new absorber tube equipped with an internal fin and a star shaped turbulator with rectangular longitudinal fins is used and is called the combined fin absorber tube. accordingly, the energy and exergy performance of the collector with or without fin and turbulator inside the absorber tube has been compared and analyzed for 6 different states. The analysis of the results showed that the collector with the combined fin absorber tube with the large internally fin has the highest energy and exergy efficiency. Also, the highest enhancement in the energy and exergy efficiencies of the collector when using this type of absorber tube instead of the smooth absorber are 5.96% and 6.76%, respectively. On the other hand, the results showed that the values of the performance evaluation criteria for the combined fin absorber tube with large internally fins and internally fin absorber tube were greater than 1, and the highest value was 1.62.

Keywords

Parabolic trough solar collector

Combined fin absorber tube. Turbulator

Exergy

Energy

Performance evaluation criteria

Subjects

• Renewable energy

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