Thermal and Electrical Performance Assessment of Elongated Compound Parabolic Concentrator

In this work, a non-imaging low concentrating 3X Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC) truncated to 1.7X has been explored. Since, CPC is a linear concentrator, the linear image formed on the absorber results in non-uniform distribution of flux. To reduce the non-uniformity in flux distribution, an optimized homogenizer has been integrated with the CPC, referred to as Elongated CPC (ECPC). Thereafter, numerical model has been developed for predicting the thermal performance of the ECPC integrated with homogenizer using actual meteorological data (wind speed and ambient temperature). Finally, the system is fabricated, and its performance is evaluated under real-world conditions. Experimental results showed a peak thermal efficiency of ~35% and peak electrical efficiency of 10%. The outlet water temperature obtained from simulations and experiments show a good match with variation of ±2 ℃.