Thermal analysis of the designed CPC and its efficiency improvement by MPPT control

Abstract

The Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC) is designed, and its optical and thermal analysis is performed in ANSYS. The CPC sizing and the optimal mass ow rate by Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) method in MATLAB are determined. The radiative transfer equation is solved by Discrete Ordinate (DO) and Monte Carlo (MC) models, and the deduced radiative ux divergence is applied as a source term in Navier-Stokes equations to model heat transfer. Results indicate that MC is faster than DO with lower computational cost and higher accuracy. The optimal mass ow rate at each timevariable solar radiation is calculated from MPPT control and entered as the inlet boundary condition for the 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model. The absorbed useful power by MPPT is about 4% higher than the constant mass ow rate case. Reduction of the convective heat transfer by locating the evacuated tube collectors inside a cavity leads to 12% more power and 25% temperature enhancement in the 3D model concerning MPPT-based analytical results. Then, the evacuated collector in a cavity with MPPT control has about 16% power gain.