Performance evaluation of parabolic dish type solar collector for industrial heating application

From Indian perspective there is a large potential available for low cost solar water heating systems. The described system can instantly fulfil needs of hot water in industrial sector. This type of system can be used for heating boiler feed water, laundry applications and other steam generation applications. In general, concentrated solar collectors have high efficiency as compared to flat plate and evacuated tube solar collectors. Therefore, for water heating application, high efficiency can be achieved. Authors used parabolic dish collector for instant water heating application. This paper reveals prototype design of solar parabolic dish collector with truncated cone shaped helical coiled receiver made up of copper and coated with nickel chrome at focal point. Instantaneous efficiency of 63.9% has been achieved with the system explained in this paper. This prototype has been evaluated for its performance during month of April and May 2010 at Shivaji University, Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India [Latitude: 16.42° North, Longitude: 74.13° West].