Optical Performance of a Novel Tube-Bundle Cavity Receiver for Solar Parabolic Trough Collectors

Solar parabolic trough collectors (PTC) are one of the mature technologies that have increased the share of solar energy in the power sector. Having a working temperature in the range of 200 to 500 °C, PTC systems can be integrated whether as a direct steam generator using water as the heat transfer fluid or with a Rankine cycle turbine by means of a heat exchanger and other heat transfer fluids such as air, molten salts, oils and nanofluid. In this research, a novel concept of a tube-bundle cavity receiver is investigated using optical simulations through SolTrace software. The obtained results proved that the tube-bundle cavity absorber will increase the average and the peak flux reaching the receiving area by near 100%. Then the optical modelling was validated for the parabolic trough solar collector of LS-2 and the results showed a very good agreement with the literature, concerning the optical criteria.