| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1550066 | Solar Energy | 2014 | 7 Pages |
•Sunlight concentration for solar-thermal system operating at high temperature.•Uniform sunlight concentration receiving pipe by proper reflector was realized.•All effects that contribute to the uneven concentration were accounted.•The realized reflector should lead to higher performance of solar-thermal systems.
Solar concentrators are essential to reach high temperatures in solar-thermal applications. The high temperature is required to achieve effective heat transfer between different sections in solar-thermal systems that are utilized to produce electricity from the produced steam. The commonly used parabolic trough and cylindrical reflectors do not provide a uniform concentration on the receiving tube; therefore, in this paper a reflector profile design that uniformly concentrate the sunlight onto the receiver was attempted and was accomplished by solving a second order differential equation numerically. Unlike the parabolic reflector, the proposed reflector was found to exhibit more uniform concentration profile; therefore it is expected to enhance the conversion efficiency and the overall solar-thermal system performance.
