Interactive Tool to Teach Solar Parabolic Trough Concepts
Abstract
Nowadays solar energy is a key factor on global energetic politics. However, in society there is still a lack of understanding of its underlying working principles (Goswami, 2001), even more widespread applications as PV (photovoltaic) and solar thermal flat collector, and although it is easy to find working examples in homes, buildings and neighborhoods. Specific educational tools are being developed and their use should contribute to a more conscious knowledge of performance and capabilities of the solar applications. Concentrated solar power CSP has been the latest technology to join this process and, although in principle its main goal is the production of huge quantities of electricity in big plants, it also has a high potential benefit to society in medium-high temperature (>150ºC) demands and high energy load applications, such as hospitals sterilization systems or industrial heating processes. Specific features of CSP devices as concentration optics, direct normal irradiance utilization and sun tracking requirements make more complex a descriptive approach to systems performance being very suitable in educational activities the support of computer tools, provided that they have a consistent foundation and a realistic interface. Scale models and remote or virtual laboratories, as well as interactive simulators, have become an important resource in the engineering field to provide technical knowledge to plant operators and students, as shown in Guzmán et al. (2007).For example, Johansson (2000) presented a quadruple-tank process laboratory used to perform exercises with interest in the field of the automatic control and chemical engineering, while an interactive tool of the same process is proposed by Dormido and Esquembre (2003) as an inexpensive alternative to the use of scale models. In the case of Ko et al. (2001), a web-based laboratory is used to perform experiments on a coupled tanks system, and Costa-Castelló (2005) proposes an educational laboratory plant to teach automatic control concepts on repetitive control. In the field of mobile robotics, Guzmán et al. (2008) presents an interactive tool designed that allow students to perform experiment with different motion planning algorithms.