Optical and thermal analysis of solar parabolic dish collector with hetero-conical cavity receiver for medium temperature applications

Concentrated solar thermal (CST) systems are favorable thermal technologies that utilize solar radiation to meet energy demands. A parabolic dish collector (PDC) is an efficient CST system because of its higher optical performance and small area for heat loss. PDC is a point-focused CST system that involves parabolic-shaped mirrors as reflectors and receivers to collect solar radiation. The receiver aperture of 0.5 m is considered for a dish aperture of 40 m2. The complete analysis of PDC systems includes optical and thermal modeling to evaluate performance. The Monte-Carlo ray tracing is used for the optical modeling of the parabolic dish with a hetero-conical receiver. SolTrace is extensively used, and the obtained heat flux is further mapped into the thermal model. The computational domain is modeled in ANSYS 2020 R1 to simulate the wind effect. The cavity receiver is subjected to heat loss caused by varying wind characteristics and receiver orientations, consequently impacting thermal efficiency. Simulations are performed, and performance is calculated. The optical and thermal performances are 84.15% and 73.11%, respectively.