Fabrication and Performance Optimization of Parabolic Trough

This paper was concerned with an experimental study of parabolic trough collector designed and manufactured. A parabolic trough solar collector uses three reflecting material stainless steel, aluminum foil and mirror glass strips affix on cloth in the shape of a parabolic cylinder to reflect and concentrate sun radiations towards an absorber tube located at the focus line of the parabolic cylinder. The receiver absorbs the incoming radiations and transforms them into thermal energy, the latter being transported and collected by a fluid medium circulating within the absorber tube. To improve performance and reduce costs direct steam generation in the collector has been proposed. The Designing and Fabrication of parabolic trough solar water heater for water heating was executed, the procedure employed includes design, construction and testing stages. The model which is made up of reflector surface, reflector support, absorber pipe and a stand with manual tracking arrangement was fabricated using locally sourced material for rural applications point of view. In this paper the efficiency of parabolic trough collectors is compared on the basis of different reflecting surfaces (current SEGS plants). The model is based on absorber fluid temperature so it can be used to predict the performance of the collector with any working fluid. We determined the performance of PTSC on the basis of different reflecting surfaces.