IMPROVED SOLUTIONS FOR TEMPERATURE AND THERMAL POWER DELIVERY PROFILES IN LINEAR SOLAR COLLECTORS

For the conversion of absorbed sunlight into useful thermal power, we demonstrate that the profiles of absorber temperature, fluid temperatu re and thermal power delivery along linear solar collectors can be sol ved in closed form even when the collector heat-loss coefficient is fa r from constant over the collector operating range. This analytic solu tion eliminates the errors inherent in earlier approximate solutions, and makes the dependence of collector performance on component propert ies transparent. An example for a realistic solar concentrator illustr ates the improvement in prediction accuracy. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.