Author : Panchal Ramchandra H and Bhosale S.K.

This paper was concerned with an experimental study of parabolic trough collector designed and manufactured. A parabolic trough solar collector uses Mirror and Aluminum foil in the shape of a parabolic cylinder to reflect and concentrate sun radiations towards an absorber tube located at the focus line of the parabolic cylinder. The receiver absorbs the incoming radiations and transforms them into thermal energy, the latter being transported and collected by water as a working medium circulating within the absorber tube. In this experimental setup, the reflected solar radiations were focused on absorber tube which was placed at focal length of the parabolic trough. To enhance the performance of parabolic trough, collector with different type of reflectors were used. It was observed for mirror has maximum temperature is 59.6ºC, which 14.22%more than Aluminum foil as reflector. Aluminum foil as reflector temperature is 53ºC Efficiency by using Mirror as reflector compared to Aluminum foil as reflector is 18.98% more. The Designing and Fabrication of parabolic trough solar water heater for water heating was executed, the procedure employed includes design, construction and testing stages. The model which is made up of reflector surface, reflector support, absorber pipe and a stand with automatic tracking arrangement was fabricated using locally sourced material for rural applications point of view.

Keywords: Concentrated solar power, evacuated tube, parabolic trough collector,reflectors