Investigation of parabolic trough collector receiver with U-pipe exchanger using a numerical approach: Towards temperature non-uniformity optimization

In this work, a numerical study of the heat flux and temperature distribution for a parabolic trough collector absorber with an internal U-pipe tube exchanger is carried out using SolTrace and ANSYS Fluent software. The effect of solar flux and temperature non-uniformity on the system performance related to the focal distance is investigated. It was noticed that the highest circumferential temperature gap of about 105 degrees C occurs at the medium of the absorber (0.9 m). Moreover, for the focal distances of 0.18 m, 0.19 m, and 0.2 m, the outlet water temperatures are increased to 328.8, 329.01 and 328.89 K, respectively. For these distances, the highest thermal efficiencies of about 69, 70 and 71%, respectively, are reported. Furthermore, the promising proposed approach to investigate the receiver performance combines simulation results and correlations between variables. Indeed, a strong negative correlation of -0.65 between thermal efficiency and focal distance is noticed. Thus, thermal efficiency correlates positively with maximum temperature gap, inlet-outlet temperature gap, flow rate, and outlet temperature in decreasing order with correlation coefficients of 0.64, 0.59, 0.38, and 0.32, respectively. Additionally, the simulation study emphasizes the importance of relating optimum temperature uniformity and thermal efficiency for optimizing the system performance.