Designing of Parabolic Trough Collector using Plane Mirrors

Abstract Parabolic trough collectors are used for concentrating solar radiation along the focal line. These collectors are commercially used for power generation. Approximately thirty-seven percent of the total cost is attributed to the solar field. In order to increase the economic viability of solar thermal power plants, there is a need to reduce the cost of solar thermal collectors. In this paper, an attempt has been made to reduce the cost of parabolic trough collectors by fabricating them using plane mirrors. In this endeavor, all factors which affect the surface area of the collector have been identified and the impact of rim angle on the surface area of the collector has been studied. It has been observed that surface area decreases sharply with an increase in rim angle from 20-60 and beyond this value, there is a negligible increase in surface area. Thus, a parabolic trough with aperture width 0.5m, length 0.95m, and rim angle of 96 has been considered for designing a parabolic trough collector using plane mirrors. It has been observed that the use of plane mirrors in place of curved mirrors significantly reduces the cost of manufacturing by 83.33 percent and will give a major boost to the large-scale installation of solar thermal power plants.