Influence of circumferential solar heat flux distribution on the heat transfer coefficients of linear Fresnel collector absorber tubes

• Internal heat transfer coefficient increased with Reynolds number.
• Internal heat transfer coefficients for uniform and non-uniform heat flux were approximately the same.
• Overall heat transfer coefficient for uniform heat flux was higher than non-uniform.
• Axial local heat transfer coefficient for uniform heat flux was higher than non-uniform.
• Heat transfer coefficients increased with decrease in tube inner diameter.

The absorber tubes of solar thermal collectors have enormous influence on the performance of the solar collector systems. In this numerical study, the influence of circumferential uniform and non-uniform solar heat flux distributions on the internal and overall heat transfer coefficients of the absorber tubes of a linear Fresnel solar collector was investigated. A 3D steady-state numerical simulation was implemented based on ANSYS Fluent code version 14. The non-uniform solar heat flux distribution was modelled as a sinusoidal function of the concentrated solar heat flux incident on the circumference of the absorber tube. The k–ε model was employed to simulate the turbulent flow of the heat transfer fluid through the absorber tube. The tube-wall heat conduction and the convective and irradiative heat losses to the surroundings were also considered in the model. The average internal and overall heat transfer coefficients were determined for the sinusoidal circumferential non-uniform heat flux distribution span of 160°, 180°, 200° and 240°, and the 360° span of circumferential uniform heat flux for 10 m long absorber tubes of different inner diameters and wall thicknesses with thermal conductivity of 16.27 W/mK between the Reynolds number range of 4000 and 210,000 based on the inlet temperature. The results showed that the average internal heat transfer coefficients for the 360° span of circumferential uniform heat flux with different concentration ratios on absorber tubes of the same inner diameters, wall thicknesses and thermal conductivity were approximately the same, but the average overall heat transfer coefficient increased with the increase in the concentration ratios of the uniform heat flux incident on the tubes. Also, the average internal heat transfer coefficient for the absorber tube with a 360° span of uniform heat flux was approximately the same as that of the absorber tubes with the sinusoidal circumferential non-uniform heat flux span of 160°, 180°, 200° and 240° for the heat flux of the same concentration ratio, but the average overall heat transfer coefficient for the uniform heat flux case was higher than that of the non-uniform flux distributions. The average axial local internal heat transfer coefficient for the 360° span of uniform heat flux distribution on a 10 m long absorber tube was slightly higher than that of the 160°, 200° and 240° span of non-uniform flux distributions at the Reynolds number of 4 000. The average internal and overall heat transfer coefficients for four absorber tubes of different inner diameters and wall thicknesses and thermal conductivity of 16.27 W/mK with 200° span of circumferential non-uniform flux were found to increase with the decrease in the inner-wall diameter of the absorber tubes. The numerical results showed good agreement with the Nusselt number experimental correlations for fully developed turbulent flow available in the literature.