Silicon porous disc featured parabolic trough collector functioned with paraffin: Thermal performance study

The advancement of renewable solar energy has potential for industrial heat exchanger applications, and its performance is enhanced by using nanofluid. Besides, the losses of heat during the energy transfer from solar to heat exchanger limit thermal performance and lead to reduced thermal efficiency. The conventional solar system functioning with nanofluid needs to be upgraded with an advanced thermal management system to limit energy loss and enrich the thermal performance of the overall system. The investigation aims to enrich the thermal performance of a parabolic trough solar collector (PTC), which features silicon porous discs and phase change material (PCM-paraffin). During the investigation, the flow of fluid ranged from 100 to 200 LPH with an interval of 50 LPH. Influences of silicon porous disc and phase change material melting phase on fluid temperature, temperature, energy stored, and thermal efficiency of the present system are experimentally investigated, and its values are related to conventional absorber performance without porous material and phase change material. The output results prove the significance of silicon porous and phase change material related to conventional absorber systems. The parabolic solar collector functioned with silicon porous material with phase change material phase on 200LPH spotted superior thermal performance including fluid temperature, PCM temperature, energy stored by phase change material, and average thermal & exergy efficiency of 84.2 degrees C, 98.5 degrees C 599.7 kJ, and 73.8 % & 15.1 %. These findings underscore the promising potential of porous medium absorbers in significantly elevating the efficiency of parabolic trough collector systems.