Studies on Performance Enhancement of Solar Parabolic Trough Collector

Abstract

Abstract newlineEnergy is required for economic development and to improve the standards of culture of any country. All the countries require more amount of energy in the form of heat or electricity, hence there is a huge demand for electricity generation. Everyone should be encouraged to use renewable source of energy to meet their energy demand. The focus on renewable energy has increased in the recent century due to the depletion of non-renewable sources of energy (fossil fuels) and the pollution. The whole world now shift to a theme of less carbon emission due to more emission of greenhouse gases which also leads to many deadly diseases. Solar energy is one of the most available efficient, reliable and exploitable form of renewable energies. India has planned to produce more electricity using solar power plant. The solar energy is also used for various industrial processes such as heating, drying, sterilisation, pressurisation and distillation etc. The level of solar radiation is high in India which receives a daily average solar radiation of about 4 to 7 kWh/m2 whereas the useful energy converted is very low. A world s largest 4000 MW solar power plant is under construction in western state of Rajasthan. An efficient solar energy conversion system has to be designed for generating maximum useful heat energy. newlineIn this research work a focus on solar collector specifically Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC) has been studied. Initially a brief literature survey has been done related to the performance and efficiency of the PTC. Based on the gap caused in the maximum solar radiation absorption by the solar collector and the need of improvement in absorber tube, an experimental work has been carried out in this work. In this experimental work the traditional water as Heat Transfer Fluid (HTF) is planned to change with the solar salt. The solar salt is the combination of sodium nitrate (NaNO3 as 60%) and potassium nitrate (KNO3 with 40%). It is widely known for the usage in Thermal Energy Storage System (TESS) as an effect