Thermal performance analysis of solar parabolic trough collector using nanofluid as working fluid: A CFD modelling study

In this work, forced convection heat transfer turbulent fluid flow inside the receiver tube of solar parabolic trough collector is numerically simulated. The CuO-water and Al2O3-water nanofluids are used in this study as working fluid. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) commercial code is employed to find hydrodynamic and heat transfer coefficients by means of Finite Volume Method (FVM). This analysis is carried out based on k-ε RNG turbulent model for different heat flux conditions. The effect of nanoparticles volume fraction (ϕ) on thermal performance of the solar parabolic collector is studied. Results show that nanofluid enhances the heat transfer characteristics of the parabolic trough collector in comparison with pure water. Also, the results indicate that by increasing of the nanoparticle volume fraction, the average Nusselt number increases for both nanofluids. Furthermore, the heat transfer coefficient was found to be enhanced up to 28% and 35% by using Al2O3-water and CuO-water nanofluids (ϕ = 3%), respectively.