Optical performance of an azimuth tracking linear Fresnel solar concentrator

• A linear Fresnel solar concentrator is installed on an azimuth tracking system.
• Analytical optical model is developed and validated.
• The effect of the main parameters on the performance of the system is studied.
• Performance of the system is better than that of the solar trough collector.

sIn this paper, a linear Fresnel solar concentrator installed on a solar azimuth tracker is studied. Based on the integration of the effective source distribution for a reflection point and the whole reflector area, we develop an analytical model to calculate the intercept factor of the concentrator and analyze its performance over a year. The prediction of our analytical optical model agrees pretty well with that of the ray tracing program SolTRACE. Then we study the effects of the main design parameters on the performance of the system. The results show that annual mean total efficiency of 61% can be obtained in optimized design when the operational temperature of the receiver is 400 °C. The performance of the azimuth tracking linear Fresnel solar concentrator (ATLFSC) is compared with that of the parabolic trough collector. It is found that the cosine factor, intercept factor and total efficiency of the ATLFSC are better than those of parabolic trough collector, showing that the ATLFSC may have great potential for solar energy utilization.