Development and Performance Investigation of Parabolic Trough Solar Collector and Latent Heat Storage Units for Indoor Cooking Application

Abstract

The main objective of the present study is to design, develop and investigate the thermal performance of a suitable indoor solar hybrid cooking system using thermal energy storage materials. For this reason, a parabolic trough solar collector (PTSC) and latent heat storage (LHS) units are designed and fabricated. The thermal performances of both systems are investigated experimentally and numerically. Furthermore, a hybrid PTSC and LHS system is proposed for solar cooking application and lab-scale experimental setup are coupled to test the performance of the hybrid system. The performance of the fabricated PTSC system is investigated experimentally, analytically and numerically. The important parameters for all the methods are inlet temperature, beam radiation, mass flow rate. The result indicates that the efficiency and useful heat decrease while inlet temperature increases keeping other parameters constant. On the other hand, the thermal efficiency is increased along with mass flow rate and solar radiations. Besides, the effect of the nanofluids on the thermal performance of PTSC is investigated numerically. However, addition of nano-particles into the base fluid brought insignificant difference. The experimental results indicate that the thermal performances of PTSC are better in the month of June as compare to October in the north east region of India. The maximum HTF outlet temperature recorded are 110.7 0C and 108 0C on June 15 and 22, respectively. Similarly, the maximum HTF outlet temperature recorded on October 13 and 18 are 89.9...