Numerical Simulation of a Parabolic Dish Solar Collector filled with a Two-Phase Nano-fluid

Abstract

A parabolic dish solar collector system is one of the main types of concentrated solar power systems that are based on point focusing and is more beneficial than the other kinds of concentrated solar power systems. Most of the literature concerning concentrated solar power systems focused on thermal losses and their relationship to the receivers with different geometries. A few former researches have investigated the impacts of the real solar flux distribution on the receivers' absorber surface in parabolicdish solar collector systems.The inaccuracy level appertaining to the isothermal assumption is more than that of areceiver’swalls with constant heat flux, simply due to heat transfer fluid running through the receiver. On the other hand, the constant heat flux approach cannot be so accurate due tothenon-uniform distribution of solar heat flux at receiver's internal walls. The current paper investigatestheusage of a two-phase nanofluid in a baffled parabolic dish solar collector under a non-uniform distribution of solar heat flux. The geometrical parameters of the collector are analyzed in this work; for this purpose, the SIMPLEC algorithm and Finite Volume Method are employed. The heat transfer fluid is based on water/Al2O3two-phase nanofluid. The most expectedaverage Nusselt number is achieved at Re = 15,000 in June. In the next section, the effects of different Reynolds numbers and months onthepredicted average Nusselt numbers will be investigated in detail. Finally, the PDSC with Z= 70 mm and F = 600 mm filled with nanofluid.