Optical Analysis of an Evacuated Tube Collector with Built-In Semicircular Concentrator for Process Heat Applications
Abstract
The aim of this study is to evaluate the optical performance of an Evacuated Tube solar thermal Collector with Semi-Circular concentrator (ETC-SC). An optical simulation model is developed in a ray-tracing software and its consistency is proven through experimental data from the literature. A parametric analysis is then performed to investigate the impact of the absorber’s radius, the absorber’s position and the acceptance angle of the semi-circular mirror on the optical efficiency of the collector. The results of this study are valuable for the design, simulation and performance analysis of the evacuated tube collectors.