Compound Parabolic Concentrators in Solar Thermal Applications: A Review

Abstract

Among all types of concentrators, compound parabolic concentrators (CPCs) have been designed as stationary solar collectors for relative high temperature operations with high cost effectiveness. The CPCs are potentially the favorable option for solar power systems and high temperature solar thermal system. This paper provided a review on studies of CPCs in solar thermal applications. It covered basic concepts, principles, and design of CPCs. It also reviewed optical models and thermal models of CPCs, as well as the thermal applications of CPCs. The challenges were also summarized.

Effect of Radiative Filling Gas in Compound Parabolic Solar Energy Collectors

“…However, there is a deep gap between the existing collectors available in the market with the optimum and high efficient ones. A large review of the solar thermal applications of CPCs can be found in the literature [5]. A series of alternative methods for enhancing the rate of heat transfer and converting much more solar radiation into enthalpy of working fluid in CPCs have been proposed by Francesconi et al [6] and Reichl et al [7].…”

Performance Enforcement of a Parabolic Solar Collector with a Separating Transparent Glass Sheet

“…Among all of the solar collectors, parabolic types are commonly used in many systems, such as water heating and desalination [2], drying process [3], and air conditioning (space heating) [4,5]. Although, there are many published papers for designing high-performance collectors, however, there is a deep gap between the existing CPCs with the optimum ones and more research works are needed to reach this goal.…”

Development and testing of a compound parabolic collector for large acceptance angle thermal applications

“…In solar plants they are often employed for collecting the incoming radiation over a wide incident angle range. This additional CPC feature allows these collectors to be applied without the need of expensive tracking systems and also to gain energy from diffuse solar radiation from a large part of the sky dome [9].…”