Design Manufacture and Experimental Study of Compound Parabolic Collectore

In this project work CPC (Compound Parabolic Concentrator) with flat plate absorber with copper tubing inside and two parabolic reflectors is first designed and then fabricated for thermal performance analysis. Here the incident rays, after reflection from the reflector, are not focused at a point but are simply collected on a line of absorber surface. Design of compound parabolic trough solar collector (CPC) without tracking is presented in this work. The thermal efficiency is obtained which is between (24-29 %) without glass cover at mass flow rate between (0.003-0.004) kg/s at concentration ratio of (3.667) without need to tracking system. Results are calculated for Pune city (18.395464’, 73.69645’) by using manufactured prototype. Good agreement between present work and the previous work. CPC is generally oriented in E-W direction. The top portion of the reflector does not intercept much radiation, so the CPC is truncated to1/2 of its full height. Truncation saves a large amount of reflector material with only a little loss in concentration ratio. Design and fabricate CPC model for a half acceptance angle θc= 29.58º to achieve higher concentration ratio. Receiver designed consists of copper tubing of about 4mm ID to control water flow rate and to obtain high output temperature of water. Also an optimum mass flow rate for maximum efficiency is evaluated experimentally.