Concentrating Solar Power Using Parabolic Trough, (Pilot Project in Islamic University of Gaza)

Today the world trends toward the non conventional energy resources such as solar energy which is replacing the repercussions resulted from the using of conventional energy. The biggest advantage of solar energy compared with other forms of clean energy is that it can provide without any environmental pollution. In addition, Gaza Strip is facing continuous electricity cut off due to the encountered siege. Therefore, the current article presents a pilot project conducted in Islamic University of Gaza by Environmental Resources Sustainability Research Group (ERSRG) to use Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), to be as electricity provider.CSP consists of: solar field with solar transfer circuit (Parabolic Trough), storage system, and power plant block with turbine, generator and cooling circuit. This article presents the output of the experiment conducted in the first part of the system: parabolic trough. ERSRG made a design of the parabolic trough that able to generate 1 KW. To achieve this result, the medium temperature thermal output should be around 200 °C. Based on some computations taken from the literature, the parabolic trough length was 5 m, the width was 2.5 m and the depth was 0.75 m. Parabolic trough collector material is from steel and layer of mirror reflectors and a heat collection element (pipe) with selective coating (glazing) was used. The experiment was conducted in July using oil and water separately. The temperature of the oil was 101 °C while for the water was 98 °C. The lack of thermal efficiency of the system and the large loss of energy was due to inaccuracy in reflection of solar energy, sun tracking system is manual, lack of smoothness mirrors and coating glass pipe was not available. ERSRG is working in modifying the system to increase the thermal efficiency and complete the other two parts of CSP.