Performance analysis of al2o3 / sic coating on absorber tube of solar parabolic trough collector

Author: 
Arunkumar.S and Sekar M

A parabolic trough is a type of concentrating collector in which the energy from the sunlight is reflected and focused on the absorber tube. In this paper a parabolic trough collector has been considered. Porous materials have higher thermal conductivity compared than the base material. This work focused on the performance of parabolic trough collector which have Al2O3 and SiC coating on the absorber tube. Absorber tube of collector was designed and modeled using SOLIDWORKS. The absorber tube’s performance was calculated theoretically without coating on it. A 3D CFD model was developed and analyzed using ANSYS FLUENT. Absorber tube made up of stainless steel was simulated with flow of water and analyzed using computational fluid dynamics software. At the end of simulation, temperature distribution over the absorber tube was studied. A comparative simulation has been made between with and without Al2O3 and SiC coating on absorber tube. Absorber tube with SiC coating was found to better when compared than Al2O3 coating and without coating and its result has shown an increase on absorber tube performance. Simulation results were showed a better agreement with already available research articles.

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DOI: 
http://dx.doi.org/10.24327/ijcar.2018.11380.1967
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