Optical characterization of solar furnace system using fixed geometry nonimaging focusing heliostat and secondary parabolic concentrator

A novel solar furnace system has been proposed to be consisted of a Nonimaging Focusing Heliostat and a smaller parabolic concentrator. In this configuration, the primary heliostat consists of 11×11 array of concave mirrors with a total reflective area of 121 m2 while the secondary parabolic concentrator has a focal length of 30 cm. To simplify the design and reduce the cost, fixed geometry of the primary heliostat is adopted to omit the requirement of continuous astigmatic correction throughout a year. The overall performance of the novel solar furnace configuration can be optimized if the heliostat's spinning-axis is fixed in the orientation dependent on the latitude angle so that the annual variation of incidence angle is the least, which ranges from 33° to 57°. Case study of the novel solar furnace system has been performed with the use of ray-tracing method to simulate solar flux distribution profile for two different target distances, i.e. 50 m and 100 m. The simulated results have revealed that the maximum solar concentration ratio ranges from 20,530 suns to 26,074 suns for the target distance of 50 m, and ranges from 40,366 suns to 43,297 suns for the target distance of 100 m.