Numerical Simulation and Thermal Performance of a Novel Parabolic Solar Collector Panels
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Abstract
This study investigates the design of a novel parabolic solar collector. It examines the effects of solar radiation on the collector panels and the flow characteristics of water through the system. The design incorporates two solar collector panels, each measuring 2×1.5 meters, with 2-inch diameter water pipes extending 11 meters in total. The parabolic panels have a focal point positioned 0.25 meters above the collector surface. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed for flow rates of 0.25, 0.50, 0.75 and 1.00 liters per minute. The computational domain consisted of 1,520,000 mesh elements for analyzing solar thermal energy and 130,000 elements for simulating heat transfer from the radiation panels to the water within the pipes. The optimal flow rate was found to be between 0.50 and 0.75 liters per minute. The results show that the designed parabolic heat collector achieves maximum thermal efficiencies of 36.03% and 41.57%, respectively.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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