APPLICATION OF NANOFLUIDS AS THE WORKING FLUID IN CONCENTRATING PARABOLIC SOLAR COLLECTORS

摘要

In this paper candidature of nanofluid as the working fluid in linear parabolic solar collectors has been analyzed by mathematically modeling its heat transfer and flow aspects. The collector has been modeled as a two dimensional steady state system, and finite difference method has been used to numerically solve the equations. The two dimensional temperature field, optical and thermal efficiencies, mean-outlet temperatures have been quantitatively evaluated and compared for the two cases (i.e., conventional parabolic collectors and nanofluid based collectors). Further, the effect of various parameters such as concentration ratio, receiver length, fluid velocity, volume fraction of nanoparticles has been studied. The whole analysis revealed that nanofluid based collector performed better than the conventional collector under similar working conditions.