Performance Evaluation of Mo/Al2O3 Coating on Absorber Tube

Concentrating collectors are also known as focusing collectors. A parabolic trough is a type of concentrating collector in which the energy from the sunlight is reflected and focused on the absorber tube. This paper focused on the performance of parabolic trough collector which has a ceramic-Metal coating on the absorber tube. A comparison of performance has made between with and without coating on the receiver. Here the ceramic metal coating is a multilayer coating and the layers are molybdenum – alumina. The Parabolic Trough Collector is designed and modeled using Pro/E and SOLIDWORKS. The absorber tube’s performance was calculated theoretically without coating on it. A three-dimensional CFD-model was developed and analyzed using the ANSYS FLUENT15.0. Absorber tube made up of stainless steel is simulated with flow of water and analyzed using computational fluid dynamics software. At the end of the simulation, temperature distribution over the absorber tube was studied. A comparative simulation is made between with and without coating on absorber tube of the parabolic trough collector. Absorber tube with ceramic-metal coating has shown in its performance about 5.03% when the heat flux increasing gradually. KeywordConcentrating collectors, parabolic trough collector, Ceramic-Metal coating CFD analysis __________________________________________________________________________________________________