Abstract—In this article heat losses of absorber tubes of parabolic trough collectors for the collector field of 250 kW Shiraz (Iran) solar thermal power plant is evaluated for various conditions. For analysis, both experimental measurements and numerical modeling are made to find the impact of failure of heat collecting tubes. The amount of heat losses are compared numerically for 3 different types of tubes; vacuum, lost vacuum (air) and broken glass (bare) tube. The experimental measured data are used to validate the numerical simulation. For temperature measurements around the glass tube and absorber tube an infrared thermograph (IR) camera is used. Thermal images are calibrated with measuring some local temperatures. For theoretical simulation a commercial code for thermal analysis of parabolic collectors are used. An absorber tube with vacuum reduces significantly the heat losses in comparison with broken tube or tube without vacuum. During power plant operation poor isolation or any glass tube failure should be avoided for any solar thermal power plants.
Index Terms—Heat loss, Parabolic trough collector, Thermal efficiency, Infrared (IR) camera.
M. Yaghoubi, F. Ahmadi, and M. Bandehee are with School of mechanical engineering, Shiraz, Iran (email: yaghoubi@shirazu.ac.ir, f_ahmadi@shirazu.ac.ir).
[PDF]
Cite: M. Yaghoubi, F. Ahmadi, and M. Bandehee, "Analysis of Heat Losses of Absorber Tubes of Parabolic through Collector of Shiraz (Iran) Solar Power Plant," Journal of Clean Energy Technologies vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 33-37, 2013.
