Experimental studies on evacuated tube cpc solar collector coupled with cascaded latent heat thermal energy storage for water heating applications

Abstract

Solar energy is the most promising renewable energy source in terms of its abundant availability and is perceived as an effective source of clean energy Flat plate collector and Evacuated Tube (ET) find use in several medium temperatures applications Nevertheless the requirement of a larger collector area low optical efficiency and abundant loss of useful heat gained reduce the overall efficiency of the system A non-tracking concentrated solar collector consisting of evacuated tubes and parabolic reflectors called as Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC) collector is proposed for addressing the above mentioned major drawbacks through an effective collection of solar energy The intermittent nature of available solar energy necessitates the integration of a Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system to reduce the mismatch between demand and the supply of energy Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage (LHTES) systems using phase change material (PCM) are ubiquitously employed in solar thermal systems particularly for water heating applications The major barrier associated with PCM such as low thermal conductivity and thermal stability can be overcome through a novel cascaded arrangement of PCMs in the TES system maintaining a required temperature driving potential Considering the existing major challenges in augmenting the thermal performance of the SWH system this research works aims to design develop and investigate the thermal performance of an ET-CPC solar collector paired with different configurations of the TES system under real-time experimental conditions newline