Experimental investigation and analysis on a concentrating solar collector using linear Fresnel lens

A concentrating solar collector based on linear Fresnel lens is investigated experimentally in this paper. This solar collector is expected to acquire a higher thermal efficiency at a relatively high temperature level than the commonly used flat-plate or evacuated tube solar collectors. Experimental results show that the thermal efficiency is about 50% when the conversion temperature (water) is 90 °C. The test shows that the indication of lost energy is 0.578 W/m2 K, which is much smaller than that of commonly used evacuated tube solar collector without concentrating. In order to make analysis, a mathematical model for evacuated tube absorber heated by linear Fresnel lens has been built. The validation shows that the model agrees with the experimental data well. The analysis indicates that Fresnel lens collector with evacuated tube absorber has good efficiency (50%) in clear day even when the conversion temperature approaches 200 °C. The influence of ambient conditions and the percent of different types of energy loss, etc., are also analyzed.