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Optical performance of circular and elliptical 3-D static solar concentrators
Date Issued
31-12-2012
Author(s)
Ali, Imhamed M.Saleh
O'Donovan, Tadhg S.
Mallick, Tapas K.
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Abstract
The present study concerns the development of a 3-D static solar concentrator with wide acceptance angle. This research is conducted to provide better insight into the geometrical-optical performance of four different concentrator configurations: Elliptical Hyperboloid Concentrator (EHC); Circular Hyperboloid Concentrator (CHC); Elliptical conical concentrator (ECC) and Circular Conical Concentrator (CCC). Ray-trace techniques are used to evaluate the optical efficiency of these configurations by performing a parametric study of their profile and geometry for a fixed concentrator height of 0.4 m, concentration ratio of 20×, and receiver area of 0.006 m2 and an ellipse aspect ratio of five. The flux distribution at the receiver for each concentrator profile is presented. It has been found that the elliptical cross section has a wider acceptance angle than the circular cross section. The EHC design has also been shown to outperform all of the other three solar concentrators with a wider acceptance angle and better optical efficiency.
Volume
1