Characterization of a Medium Temperature Concentrator for Process Heat – Tracking Error Estimation

On-site parabolic-trough collector characterization in solar district heating plant under quasi-dynamic conditions

“…The results showed that the proposed methodology is possible to implement for an on-site parabolic trough collector testing. However the heat losses cannot really be determined as the temperature range in the collectors are similar along the testing days as seen in [8]. However, other effects such as the cleanliness of the sensors and of the collector should be considered in future works.…”

“…In a previous study [7], a large-size PTC array has been tested at the Plataforma Solar de Almeria (PSA) using a collector installed in East-West orientation and studying particularly the goodness of the quasi-dynamic (QDT) methodology. In-situ measurements were also performed in Malta on a solar tracking collector [8]. In the present work, six PTC rows installed in a solar thermal heating plant have been characterized using the same methodology but for in-site testing and for an orientation North-South like normally oriented in CSP plants.…”

Evaluation of the tracking accuracy of parabolic-trough collectors in a solar plant for district heating

“…In the present study only the PTCs were studied. Many studies done in the last decade have already characterized the PTC efficiency [5][6][7][8], but few on site efficiency studies focused on the tracking error estimation of the PTC trackers [9][10][11]. Fig.…”

“…Fig. 1 presents a summary of the acceptance angle as described in [11] as the angle until which the tracking errors do not have a significant impact on the PTC efficiency.…”