Design and Development of Paraboloid Solar Concentrator for Wax Melting
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Date
2007
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Publisher
MPUAT, Udaipur
Abstract
Solar energy is the one of the major sources of energy which is renewable inexhaustible, clean and can significantly contribute the world energy requirement with available conversion technology.
The research work was undertaken to design and develop solar paraboloid concentrator for paraffin wax melting of 5 kg/hr capacity at department of Renewable Energy Sources, CTAE, Udaipur. The collector of paraboloid concentrator was 1.3 m in diameter with focal length of 0.30 m. The performance evaluation of the system was done and techno-economic was evaluated.
The performance of paraboloid solar concentrator was evaluated for two conditions i.e. no load and full load. During no load testing maximum temperature achieved in the system was 224OC. The full load performance of the system was evaluated with paraffin wax. The maximum and minimum time required for paraffin wax melting was 33 and 10 min respectively. The maximum melting efficiency of the paraboloid solar concentrator system was found to 40.7 per cent at 12.30 h.
Water heating and cooling tests are performed to evaluate the performance of the paraboloid concentrator in terms of overall heat loss factor (F’UL) and optical efficiency factor (F’no). The overall heat loss factor was found to be 41.36 and 39.46 W/m2 K for different tests in the month of May. The optical efficiency factor (F’no) was worked out to be 0.2056 and 0.2125 for the same tests. The optical efficiency of the system was found to be 20.56 and 21.25 per cent.
The thermal efficiency of the paraboloid solar concentrator system was determined. The observed thermal efficiency of the system was 28.61 and 28.91 per cent for average solar insolation of 635.5 and 710 W/m2 respectively. The cost of the system was found to be Rs. 3855/- with 1.934 benefit to cost ratio. The cost could be recovered within the period of 3.9 years.
Description
Design and Development of Paraboloid Solar Concentrator for Wax Melting
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Citation
Maruti and Kurchania, 2007