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Comparative experimental study on parabolic trough collector integrated with thermal energy storage system by using different reflective materials

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Abstract

The present study focuses on the performance analysis of parabolic trough collector (PTC) incorporated with single-tank thermal energy storage (TES) system with the use of two different reflective materials in PTC which includes glass and high-reflective stainless steel sheet. It consists of TES tank which contains 110 L of Therminol-66 oil (heat transfer fluid). The experiments are conducted for the use of glass reflective material PTC and stainless steel reflective material PTC when both are integrated with TES system. The various performance parameters like useful energy gained by the PTC, energy collected in the PTC, PTC efficiency, heat loss coefficient and the stored amount of energy in TES tank are calculated to know the overall efficiency of the system during daytime. It has been concluded that the use of glass as the reflective material in PTC has better useful heat gain and high average PTC efficiency in comparison with stainless steel reflective material. However, the overall system performance is almost equal to both reflective materials. Silver-coated stainless steel reflective material may be preferred in PTC when it is coupled with single TES tank system, due to cost effectiveness and ease availability with a high-reflective power about 98.9%.

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Abbreviations

\(T_{\text{e}}\) :

Reference or environment temperature (K)

\(A_{\text{s}}\) :

Storage tank surface area (m2)

\(C_{\text{p}}\) :

Specific heat capacity (J kg−1 K−1)

\({\text{Ex}}_{\text{PCM}}\) :

Rate of exergy stored in the PCM tank (W)

\({\text{Ex}}_{\text{i}}\) :

Rate solar exergy input to the PTC (W)

\(Q_{\text{loss}}\) :

Amount of energy used for the charging process of PCM (W)

\(Q_{\text{u}}\) :

Useful heat gain (W)

\(T_{\text{HTF}}\) :

Average temperature of HTF (°C)

\(T_{\text{PCM}}\) :

Average temperature of PCM (°C)

\(T_{\text{S}}\) :

Average oil temperature in the storage tank (°C)

\(T_{\text{a}}\) :

Average ambient temperature (°C)

\(T_{\text{i}}\) :

Oil inlet temperature (°C)

\(T_{\text{m}}\) :

Melting temperature of PCM (K)

\(T_{\text{o}}\) :

Oil outlet temperature (°C)

\(T_{\text{si}}\) :

HTF inlet temperature to the storage tank (K)

\(T_{\text{so}}\) :

HTF exit temperature from the storage tank (K)

\(T_{\text{sun}}\) :

Sun temperature (K)

\(U_{\text{loss}}\) :

Overall heat loss coefficient (W m−2 K−1)

\(\eta_{\text{Charging}}\) :

Charging efficiency of the storage tank (%)

\(\eta_{\text{PTC}}\) :

PTC efficiency (%)

\(\varphi_{\text{charging}}\) :

Exergy efficiency of the system during the charging process (%)

A a :

Aperture area of PTC (m2)

E C :

Energy collected by the PTC (W)

E s :

Energy accumulated in the TES tank (W)

\(\dot{m}\) :

Flow rate of oil (kg s−1)

m :

Mass of HTF and PCM (kg)

\(I\) :

Solar incident radiation (W m−2)

\({\text{LMTD}}\) :

Logarithmic mean temperature difference (°C)

x + 10:

10-min-time interval from xth time

x:

At any instant of time

a:

Ambient/aperture

i:

Initial/inlet

o:

Outlet

TES:

Thermal energy storage

CR:

Concentration ratio

HTF:

Heat transfer fluid

PTC:

Parabolic trough collector

PCM:

Phase change material

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India

    Nagappan Beemkumar, Alagu Karthikeyan & Subbiah Ganesan

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Madanapalle Institute of Technology and Science, Madanapalle, India

    Devarajan Yuvarajan

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  1. Nagappan Beemkumar
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  2. Devarajan Yuvarajan
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  4. Subbiah Ganesan
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Correspondence to Nagappan Beemkumar.

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Beemkumar, N., Yuvarajan, D., Karthikeyan, A. et al. Comparative experimental study on parabolic trough collector integrated with thermal energy storage system by using different reflective materials. J Therm Anal Calorim 137, 941–948 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-018-07989-6

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