Multi-objective and thermodynamic optimisation of a parabolic trough receiver with perforated plate inserts

•The study focuses on the use of perforated plate inserts in a parabolic trough receiver.•Multi-objective and thermodynamic optimisation of the receiver is investigated.•Influence of Reynolds numbers, fluid temperature and insert geometry is presented.•Pareto optimal solutions and optimal insert configurations are presented.•Optimal Reynolds at which entropy generation is a minimum is obtained and presented.

In this paper, multi-objective and thermodynamic optimisation procedures are used to investigate the performance of a parabolic trough receiver with perforated plate inserts. Three dimensionless perforated plate geometrical parameters considered in the optimisation include the dimensionless orientation angle, the dimensionless plate diameter and the plate spacing per unit meter. The Reynolds number varies in the range 1.02 × 104 ≤ Re ≤ 1.36 × 106 depending on the fluid temperature. The multi-objective optimisation was realised through the combined use of computational fluid dynamics, design of experiments, response surface methodology and the Non-dominated Sorted Genetic Algorithm-II. For thermodynamic optimisation, the entropy generation minimisation method was used to determine configurations with minimum entropy generation rates.