Optical and thermal performance simulation of a micro-mirror solar collector

Abstract

Concentrating solar thermal systems are widely used for industrial heat production. The state-of-the-art methods use different concepts among which tracking Fresnel mirrors or parabolic troughs. In the market however there are very few devices operating at intermediate to medium temperatures. In order to fill this gap, an innovative concentrating solar thermal system is studied in the frame of the Hellenic — German cooperation project “SCoSCo”. The proposed device concentrates the solar radiation to the receiver using a micro-mirror array. The scope of this paper is to present the optical simulation results of this innovative reflector, and compare the results obtained by different software packages. The optical performance assessed using Solstice ray-tracing software, yields a theoretical optical efficiency from 0.7 to 0.9. In order to evaluate the annual energy yield of the prototype, solar radiation data measurements in Patras, Greece for 2016 and were used as input. A three dimensional thermal model is developed in the COMSOL software to estimate the temperature distribution at the receiver. It was found that temperatures , ranged from 115 to 225 °C. The annual energy yield, calculated using the CARNOT toolbox ranges from 683 to 729 kWh.

Keywords

• Concentrating solar collectors
• Solar thermal systems
• Optical performance
• Optical simulation
• Thermal simulation
• Mirror array