Abstract
The objective of this work is the integration of a linear cavity receiver in an asymmetric compound parabolic collector. Two different numerical models were developed; one for the conventional geometry and one for the cavity configuration. Both models were examined for inlet temperatures from 20 °C up to 80 °C, considering water as the operating fluid with a typical volume flow rate of 15 lt/h. Emphasis was given to the comparison of the thermal and optical performance between the designs, as well as in the temperature levels of the fluids and the receiver. The geometry of the integrated cavity receiver was optimized according to two independent parameters and two possible optimum designs were finally revealed. The optimization took place regarding the optical performance of the collector with the cavity receiver. The simulation results indicated that the cavity design leads to enhancements of up to 4.40% and 4.00% in the optical and thermal efficiency respectively, while the minimum possible enhancement was above 2.20%. The mean enhancements in optical and thermal performance were found to be 2.90% and 2.92% respectively. Moreover, an analytical solution was developed for verifying the numerical results and the maximum deviations were found to be less than 5% in all the compared parameters. Especially, in thermal efficiency verification, the maximum deviation took a value of less than 0.5%. The design and the simulations in the present study were conducted with the SolidWorks Flow Simulation tool.