Solar Energy 134 (2016) 383–391

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Solar Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

A novel Compound Elliptical-type Concentrator for parabolic primaries

with tubular receiver
Diogo Canavarro a,⇑, Julio Chaves b, Manuel Collares-Pereira c
a
University of Évora – Renewable Energies Chair, Palácio do Vimioso, Largo Marquês de Marialva, Apart. 94, 7002-554 Évora, Portugal
b
Light Prescriptions Innovators, Madrid, Spain
c
University of Évora – Renewable Energies Chair (Holder), Évora, Portugal

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The Parabolic Trough (PT) is the most used concentrator in CSP (Concentrated Solar Power). However, this
Received 14 January 2016 concentrator technology is facing a significant challenge to increase its overall efficiency and cost-
Received in revised form 11 May 2016 effectiveness. Meanwhile, other low-cost solutions such as Fresnel concentrators are also being perceived
Accepted 17 May 2016
as potentially attractive. In order to achieve the lower cost goal, new optical solutions can be considered,
in parallel with improvements coming, for instance, through the use of new materials or manufacturing
solutions. But conventional PTs can still be improved to yield, for instance, higher concentration values, a
Keywords:
possible starting point for higher conversion efficiency. These new solutions, in turn, can also be useful for
Parabolic Trough
Compound Elliptical Concentrator
other technologies and applications (Fresnel Concentrators, Central Tower Receivers, etc.). However it is
Simultaneous Multiple Surface easier to develop and test these solutions in conjunction with parabolic primaries (continuum primary).
Concentrated Solar Power And that is the topic of this paper: to present a new Compound Elliptical-type Concentrator for a para-
bolic primary with a tubular receiver. A comparison is made between this new concentrator and two
other concentrators (a conventional PT concentrator and a XX SMS (Simultaneous Multiple Surface) con-
centrator), as well as a calculation of the total amount of collected energy (kW h) for a particular location,
Faro (Portugal). The paper ends with a discussion of the results obtained, their impact and possible appli-
cations in the future.
Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction the same aperture area and thus smaller thermal losses, thereby
enhancing the energy delivered by the concentrator by a signifi-
Recently new optical solutions for tubular receivers were pro- cant amount.
posed (Canavarro et al., 2013a, 2013b, 2014), based on the Simul- Nevertheless these solutions have some drawbacks. Firstly, the
taneous Multiple Surface (SMS) method (Chaves, 2016; Winston SMS method is a powerful but complex design method. The simul-
et al., 2005). These solutions, designed for Parabolic Trough like taneous design of all the optical parts of the concentrator using the
primaries and Fresnel primaries, have potential; they have as little SMS chains (Chaves, 2016; Winston et al., 2005) is far from being
optical losses as possible, while approaching as much as possible trivial. Plus, practical experience showed that this method can be
the limit of CAP = C sin(h) = 1, where CAP is the Concentration somewhat unstable during the optimization process of the optic
Acceptance-Product (Benítez, 1998), h is the half-acceptance angle (adjustments of design parameters), being very sensible to little
of the concentrator (Chaves, 2016; Winston et al., 2005) and the variations of the values of the input parameters (resulting in dis-
receiver is in vacuum or air (refractive index n = 1). tortion of the concentrator). Another problem of these concentra-
In practice, for the same acceptance angle, a higher CAP really tors is the size of the secondary mirror. In fact, by achieving a
means a larger aperture area for the same receiver (higher concen- much higher CAP than the other concentrators for the same
tration) when compared with the conventional Parabolic Trough acceptance-angle and tubular receiver, the result is a significant
(PT) concentrators and with most Linear Fresnel (LFR) concentra- increase of the size of the secondary mirror, which ‘‘increases”
tors present on the market nowadays. If non evacuated receivers the apparent size of the tubular receiver ‘‘seen” from the primary
were to be used this could also mean a smaller diameter tube for field. That, by the way, is the reason why these SMS concentrators
can increase their aperture size without penalizing the acceptance-
angle. As an example, Fig. 1 shows a comparison between the sizes
⇑ Corresponding author.
of the secondary mirrors of a conventional Fresnel concentrator
E-mail address: diogocvr@uevora.pt (D. Canavarro).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2016.05.027
0038-092X/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
384 D. Canavarro et al. / Solar Energy 134 (2016) 383–391

Nomenclature

PW pipe width (m)

Latin characters PT Parabolic Trough
[A, B] Euclidean distance between points A and B qelec instantaneous electric energy produced
AC area of solar collector field (m2) R circular receiver
AL aperture length (m) r radius of the circular receiver
AG gap between two consecutive rows (m) SMS Simultaneous Multiple Surface
C geometric concentration (
) Tin temperature of the HTF at the entrance of the receiver
CAP Concentration-Acceptance Product tube (°C)
CEC Compound Elliptical Concentrator Tm mean temperature of the HTF (°C)
CPC Compound Parabolic Concentrator Tout temperature of the HTF at the exit of the receiver tube
CPV Concentrated PhotoVoltaics (°C)
CSP Concentrated Solar Power Tw working temperature (°C)
DNI Direct Normal Irradiance U etendue
ER energy captured by the receiver w wave front
EP energy captured by the primary
HR receiver linear heat losses (W/m) Greek characters
HP connecting pipes linear heat losses (W/m) gS steam conversion efficiency
HTF Heat Transfer Fluid gT turbine conversion efficiency
K Incidence Angle Modifier gopt optical efficiency
LP total length of connecting pipes (m) h half acceptance-angle (°)
LFR Linear Fresnel Reflector hZ solar zenith angle (°)
n refractive index u rim angle (°)
NR number of rows of a solar field uS solar azimuth angle (°)
PL pipe length (m)

(smaller CPC secondary) and a Fresnel XX SMS concentrator (large CEC concentrator for the same evacuated tube with the same
secondary). acceptance angle as in Canavarro et al. (2013a, 2013b, 2014) and
These large secondary mirrors have two major drawbacks: (1) compare the new concentrator both with a generic PT concentrator
they produce a lot of shading over the primary field and (2) it representative of present day PT technology (Kearney, 2007) as
may be more difficult to manufacture and use them in practice. well as with the XX SMS concentrator (Canavarro et al., 2013a).
Point (1) above is especially true for LFR concentrators with SMS The comparison will be made in terms of several different param-
second stage concentration (Canavarro et al., 2013b), since, in this
case, the secondary mirror is fixed and, therefore, as the sun moves
in the sky the shading of the secondary will go over the entire pri-
mary field, hence decreasing the efficiency of the concentrator. In
PT-type concentrators this may not be particularly problematic,
since in this case all the optical elements track the sun as a whole,
but, on the other hand, it might cause some mechanical-tracking
problems due to size of the secondary.
A possible alternative is to use the Winston–Welford design
CPC
method, also known as the flow-line method (Chaves, 2016;
Winston et al., 2005) (smaller CPC secondary in Fig. 1). The optics
generated with this method can be more compact but with lower
CAP values than the SMS ones. Therefore, a possible solution is to
combine the two methods and design a ‘‘hybrid” concentrator, an
in-between solution aimed for higher CAP values than the flow-
lines concentrators and with less shading losses that the SMS
concentrators.
One possibility is to design a CEC-type (Compound Elliptical
Concentrator, CEC for short) concentrator for a continuous primary
(parabolic-type). The reason for a continuous primary is mainly
related with the design process. It is usually easier to design new
optical solutions for a continuous primary than for other configura-
tions, such as Fresnel primaries. Plus, since PT is the most common
technology for CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) today (Crespo,
2011) it makes sense to start with the design of a concentrator of
that type and compare its performance with the conventional
configurations.
Given that all linear concentrators for CSP, of whatever type, are
designed for the same 70 mm diameter receiver tube within a glass Fig. 1. Comparison of dimensions between a CPC secondary and a XX SMS
secondary for a Fresnel primary and a tubular receiver of 70 mm. Both optics have
envelope (a sort of practical market imposed standard), for the
an acceptance-angle of 0.44° but different concentration (CAP) factors: 73.71
and
sake of comparison, the choice in this paper is to develop a new 50.13
for Fresnel XX SMS and Fresnel CPC, respectively.
 D. Canavarro et al. / Solar Energy 134 (2016) 383–391 385

eters including optical performance and energy delivery on yearly U P ¼ 2PX sin h ð2Þ
terms, with real solar radiation data and proper ray tracing, taking
On the other hand, the maximum etendue captured by the cor-
into account end effects, cosine of incidence angle effects, and inci-
responding half of the receiver, UR, is given by (n = 1):
dence angle modifiers effects for most incident rays, not only
transversal and at normal incidence (the design condition). U R ¼ 2p r ð3Þ
As will be shown, the new design offers several potential advan-
Combining Eqs. (2) and (3) one gets:
tages for a complete collector field: substantial reduction of the
number of necessary rows to achieve a given installed power, as 2pr
2P X ¼ ð4Þ
well as higher degree of compactness (occupied ground per peak sin h
watt). The first one will certainly impact on kW h production cost, Now one can re-write Eq. (4) as follows:
and the second one whenever land or roof top occupation is at
½S1 ; S2  pr
premium. ½S2 ; P1  sin u þ ¼ () ½S2 ; P1 
The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2 the design 2 sin h
method of the CEC concentrator is presented. Section 3 shows pr ½S1 ; S2 
¼  ð5Þ
the results of the comparison between the CEC and present day sin h sin u 2 sin u
PT and XX SMS concentrators. Finally, in Section 4 some conclu-
where [S2, P1] is the Euclidean distance between S2 and P1. Replac-
sions and perspectives for the future are also discussed.
ing [S2, P1] from Eq. (5) into Eq. (1) one gets:

2. CEC-type concentrator optic design 4pr cos h

½S1 ; S2  ¼ ð6Þ
sinð2h þ 2uÞ
2.1. Optimized CEC-type concentrator for tubular receivers
From Eq. (6) one can see that the size of the entrance S1S2 depends
only on h and u.
In order to start the design of the CEC-type concentrator, it is
Now choosing a value for h and u, the size of the entrance S1S2 is
necessary to define the proper size of its entrance, through which
completely defined and one can start the design of the optic. The
the light coming from the primary enters. As shown in Fig. 2, one
can define the position of a point P1 which is the edge of the pri-
mary mirror. The entrance S1S2 can now be completely illuminated 2θ
by P1, intersecting the edge-rays (Chaves, 2016; Winston et al.,
2005) coming from P1 with points S1 and S2, where h is the half-
acceptance angle of the concentrator and u is the rim angle. The
values of h and u are chosen by the user and subject to an opti-
2θ r2
mization process. The light which enters through S1S2 will be, then, R r1
concentrated onto a circular receiver R with center point F, radius r S3
and placed at a distance h from the entrance S1S2. Therefore, one s1
S1 S2 v
can write:
½S1 ; S2  cosðu þ 2hÞ ¼ ½S2 ; P1  sinð2hÞ ð1Þ P1

The etendue of the incoming light illuminating the half-right P2 p1

part of the primary, UP, is given by Chaves (2016) as UP = 2nPX sin h
where n is the refractive index in which the primary is immersed (a)
(n = 1 for air or vacuum) and P1 = (PX, PY) and PX is the size of the 2θ w1
half-part of the primary. One may then write: w2

S4
s2
w3

S3

s1

S1
P1
P2 p1

(b)
Fig. 3. Optimized CEC-type concentrator optic design. (a) Definition of the portions
p1 and s1. (b) The rays coming from w1 are reflected to the ‘‘bottom” edges of the
Fig. 2. Definition of the entrance S1S2 of the secondary concentrator. receiver, perpendicular to wave front w2. The rays coming from are reflected to S1.
386 D. Canavarro et al. / Solar Energy 134 (2016) 383–391

first step is to define the first portions of the primary and the sec- S 4 s3
ondary. As shown in Fig. 3a, the primary p1 is a parabola rotated by S5
an angle of p/2  h relative to the x1 axis with focus at S1, starting
R
at P1 and finishing at P2 where p1 crosses the vertical line v which
passes through the center of receiver R. The secondary portion s1 is w3
a macrofocal ellipse with focus P1 macrofocus at receiver R, start-
ing at S1 and finishing at S3, where the edge-ray r2 coming from s2
P1 intersects it. Ray r2 makes an angle 2h to ray r1.
Now with the portion p1 one can design the rest of the
secondary mirror starting at S3. As shown in Fig. 3b, this can be rT
done using a cartesian oval (Chaves, 2016) s2 which reflects the
edge-rays coming from wave front w1 (tilted by an angle +h to
the horizontal) in directions tangent to the bottom of the receiver
(perpendicular to wave front w3). The rays coming from wave front
w2 (tilted by an angle h to the horizontal) are reflected towards S1
since p1 is, as mentioned above, a parabola rotated by an angle of
S3
p/2  h relative to the x1 axis with focus at S1. Mirror portion s2
ends at S4 where it is tangent to the involute (Chaves, 2016; (a)
Winston et al., 2005) s3 (involute to the receiver R), as shown in
Fig. 4a. Ideally, the concentrator would be designed for the
U-shaped red receiver in Fig. 4a and involute s3 would take this x2
U-shaped receiver and ‘‘transform” it to circular receiver R. Now
the secondary mirror is totally defined by the portions s1, s2 and
s3. The other half of the primary is symmetric with respect to the
vertical axis x2 which passes through the center of R, as shown in
Fig. 4b.
The optimized optic presented in Fig. 4b is designed for maxi-
mum concentration and maximum efficiency. When designing
solar concentrators it is very useful to test its merits through an
‘‘ideal analysis” of the concentrator, in order to ensure that the
optic is properly designed. This ideal analysis can be done through
a raytracing analysis using ideal materials and collimated (parallel)
rays of the source to calculate the ideal geometric concentration C,
ideal acceptance-angle h and ideal optical efficiency at vertical inci-
dence gopt0. Table 1 summarizes the results of this ideal analysis of
an optimized CEC-type concentrator designed for a half-acceptance
angle h of 1° and a rim angle u of 21.1° and Fig. 5 shows the angular
transmission curve of the concentrator. In this analysis the effec-
tive acceptance angle of the optic is defined as the incidence angle
for which the concentrator collects 90% of the on-axis power
(Benítez, 1998) with fixed heliostats (no rotation of heliostats).
As can be seen, this optical has an ideal value of gopt but not an
ideal value of CAP. This means that this optimized optic does not
reach the theoretical limits of concentration, although the value
obtained is very close to 1 (the receiver is considered to be
immersed in air or vacuum, n = 1). This happens due to the shading
of the receiver over the mirror portion s2, as mentioned in the
x1
description of the design process. In fact, by shading the remaining
part of the s2 portion between points S4 and S5, not all the edge-
rays coming from w1 are redirected towards w3, which corresponds
to a mismatch of etendue and, therefore, a loss of CAP. This situa- (b)
tion can also be seen in Fig. 5, where the angular transmission
curve of the concentrator is not a perfect step-shaped curve, as Fig. 4. Optimized CEC-type concentrator optic design. (a) Details of the mirror
would be expected. Nevertheless, this concentrator has a very high portions s2 and s3. (b) The complete optimized CEC-type concentrator.
value of CAP and it is only due to this physical factor that it is not
able to achieve the maximum possible concentration. Thus, one
Table 1
can say that this concentrator properly designed and it can be used Ideal analysis performance of an optimized CEC-type concentrator designed for half-
for practical applications. acceptance angle h of 1° and a rim angle u of 21.1°.

Optic C(
) u (°) h (°) gopt0 CAP

2.2. A practical CEC-type concentrator for evacuated tubular receivers
Optimized CEC-type concentrator 55.05 21.1 1 1 0.96

The optimized CEC-type concentrated presented in the previous

section may not be suitable for practical applications. In fact, this
concentrator was designed for a conventional tubular receiver 2014). On the other hand, the previous concentrator was designed
without a glass cover but nowadays the common approach is to for maximum concentration which, in turn, produces a very large
use evacuated tubular receivers (Canavarro et al., 2013a, 2013b, secondary mirror – which increases the size of the receiver ‘‘seen”
 D. Canavarro et al. / Solar Energy 134 (2016) 383–391 387

T(θZ) 2θ w2
1.0
w1
0.8

0.6
2θ
S4 l1
0.4 s2
S3 w3
0.2

s1
θZ P1
-1.0 -0.5 0.5 1.0
S1 p1
Fig. 5. Ideal analysis of the angular transmission of the optimized CEC-type
P2
concentrator. The result is not a perfect step-shaped curve since the optic does not
reach the maximum concentration.

(a)
from the primary field. Thus, some changes in the design process
are necessary in order to have a concentrator adapted to the prac- °
tical constraints. 120 S5
The design method is similar to the one presented before. The s3
major difference is on the secondary mirror and in particular the
G
location of the point S4 located outside of glass cover G where
S4 l1 T
the mirror intersects the horizontal line l1 coming from the top
point T of the tubular receiver R, as shown in Fig. 6a and b. Ideally,
the secondary mirror should surround the receiver tube and touch R
it at its top T. This would be done by modifying the secondary mir-
ror in such a way that it would continue as an involute to R beyond
s2 ending at T. However, since an evacuated tubular receiver is
used this means that the secondary would touch the top point T
of the receiver, crossing the glass tube G and touching the hot
receiver R inside it. An alternative would be to redesign the sec-
ondary in such a way that it would end at point S5, leaving a gap
between secondary mirror and receiver R. However, this gap is
harmful since it decreases the optical efficiency of the concentrator
and, of course, its global yearly efficiency conversion.
Nevertheless, the gap problem is well-known for many years
and some possible solutions have already been presented (Ries (b)
and Mushaweck, 1999; McIntire, 1978; Winston, 1980). This work
Fig. 6. Practical CEC-type concentrator optic design. (a) Definition of the portions p1
uses a micro-structure shaped as 120° wedges, as shown in Fig. 6b and s1. (b) A micro-structure in form of 120° wedges s3 is used to avoid gap losses.
(portion s3). The micro-structure ends at S5, which is the top of the
glass cover of the evacuated tubular receiver. The number of
wedges chosen (6 ‘‘v’s” in total) establishes a compromise between
the optical performance (the higher the number of wedges, the
better they adjust to the shape of the receiver) and the practical
constrains (a high number of wedges is harder to manufacture). x2
Now the secondary mirror is totally defined by the portions s1,
s2 and s3. The other half of the primary is symmetric with respect to
the vertical axis x2 which passes through R, as shown in Fig. 7. A
gap [A, B] is included in order to ensure that the primary is not
shaded by the secondary mirror.

3. Results and comparison

3.1. Optical performance

In order to test the merits of the CEC-type concentrator two x1

comparisons are presented. The first one is made between the
CEC-type concentrator and a commercial Parabolic Trough (PT)
A B
concentrator (‘‘SKAL-ET 120” Kearney, 2007); the second one will
be between the CEC-type concentrator and the XX SMS concentra-
tor (Canavarro et al., 2013a). The comparison with these solutions Fig. 7. The complete practical CEC-type concentrator.
388 D. Canavarro et al. / Solar Energy 134 (2016) 383–391

is important from a practical point of view, since the results will  Same mirror materials.
allow the familiar reader, to have an immediate idea of what can  Receiver tubes are horizontal and oriented in the North–South
be achieved/gained in potential performance (cost-effectiveness) direction.
with the CEC-type concentrator in real world conditions.
As explained in Section 1, the choice was to consider that the The details of PT concentrator and XX SMS (Canavarro et al.,
same receiver is used in all collectors compared. It might have been 2013a) considered in this comparison are shown in Table 2. The
another choice. For instance that of a fixed entrance aperture size, PT concentrator chosen represents what can be typically found
but then the new design, with its higher concentration, would not on the market without attempting to be specific about one brand
have an evacuated tubular technology to be associated with. or another.
It should be noted that a fixed exit aperture (fixed receiver Materials properties considered for all optics are shown in
radius) is only a scale factor of the concentrators. This approach Table 3.
has also been successfully used for other SMS optics with vacuum The optical efficiency gopt is defined, for a certain incidence
tubes (Canavarro et al., 2013a, 2013b, 2014). angle, as the ratio of energy captured by the receiver ER and the
In the field of Concentrated Photovoltaics (CPV), other choices energy intersected by primary EP:
are made. For instance an equivalent comparison would impose
the same acceptance angle and the same entrance aperture, but ER
different exit apertures, since solar cells can then be cut in different gopt ¼ ð7Þ
EP
sizes to accommodate the different Concentration Acceptance Pro-
duce (CAP) values, given by CAP = C ⁄ sin(h) (Benítez et al., 2010). One possible way to estimate EP is to consider that all primary
Geometrical concentration C is defined as the ratio between the mirrors (optical surfaces) are perfect absorbers and calculate how
mean Irradiance (W/m2) on the receiver and the Irradiance of the much incident light (sunlight) they absorb. This gives us the max-
uniform source which fully illuminates the concentrator (sunlight imum amount of light that the primary could ideally send towards
irradiance). From a practical point of view, C can be calculated the receiver. Then, in a second phase, the mirrors (both primary
using a ray tracing software, creating a uniform source of rays with and secondary) are given their actual optical properties and the
a well-defined Irradiance value and calculating the mean Irradi- amount of sunlight ER reaching the receiver may be estimated.
ance on the receiver. In this specific calculation, the material prop- These calculations may be done using a raytracing software.
erties of all the optical elements should be ideal, i.e., the optical The CEC-type concentrator was compared with the PT and XX
losses of the concentrator are due only to the geometry of the con- SMS for gopt0, C and CAP. As stated above, these calculations were
centrator and not to optical characteristics such as reflectivity or performed with commercial raytracing software which includes
absorption. In this way, only the geometry of the system comes the material properties and also the sunlight semi-angular aper-
into play and one can calculate how many times (
) the mean Irra- ture (0.27°). The results are shown in Table 4.
diance on the receiver is higher than the Irradiance of the uniform As can be seen, the CEC-type concentrator has better perfor-
source, resulting in the geometric concentration C. mance in terms of CAP than the PT and worse than the XX SMS.
Other characteristics of the concentrator are also analyzed: gopt0 This result is not surprising since, as explained in Section 1, the
(optical efficiency at the perpendicular direction) and CAP. How- CEC-type concentrator is a ‘‘hybrid” solution, designed to be in
ever, this new raytracing analysis considers realistic material prop- between the flow-line and the SMS solutions. The performance in
erties and the finite angular aperture of sunlight. Thus the terms of gopt0 is slightly lower than that of the XX SMS. This is
comparison in this paper is done with the following assumptions: related with the reflections on the secondary mirror and on the
micro-structured wedges.
 The half-acceptance angle, h, calculated for the perpendicular Finally a calculation of the amount of energy delivered to the
(vertical) incidence direction, is the same (same overall toler- receiver in real world operating conditions was performed. This
ances for all optics). In this analysis the effective acceptance analysis was done, again, using commercial raytracing software,
angle of the optic is defined as the incidence angle for which as well a numerical method developed in a previous paper
the concentrator collects 90% of the on-axis power (Benítez, (Canavarro et al., 2014). The total amount of energy captured by
1998) with fixed heliostats (no rotation of heliostats). the receiver, ER, is evaluated for an uniform source which fully cov-
 All optics have an infinite length (no end losses). ers the primary, varying the source irradiance according to the
 The size (diameter) of the receiver is the same. solar irradiance value for each sun direction I(hZ, uS), and calculat-
 Same evacuated tubular receiver (SCHOTT PTR70, 2013). ing a function ER(hZ, uS), where hZ is the zenith angle and uS is the
azimuth angle (Rabl, 1985).

Table 2
Details of the PT and XX SMS concentrators.

Optic Aperture width (m) Mirror length (m) Receiver radius (m) Aspect ratio (height/width) u (°) C(
) h (°)
PT 5.77 6.40 0.035 0.30 80.3 26.24 0.694
XX SMS 11.08 11.71 0.035 0.51 55 50.38 0.694

Table 3
Materials properties.

Reflectivity Absorptivity Transmissivity

Primary mirror 92% (Alanod MIRO products) – –
Secondary mirror 94% (Alanod MIRO products) – –
Receiver tube – 96% (SCHOTT PTR70, 2013) –
Glass cover – – 97% AR-coated glass tube (SCHOTT PTR70, 2013)
 D. Canavarro et al. / Solar Energy 134 (2016) 383–391 389

Table 4
Comparison results.

Optic gopt0 C(
) h (°) CAP u (°) Aperture width (m) Mirror length (m) Receiver radius (m) Aspect ratio (height/width)
PT 0.80 26.23 0.695 0.32 80.3 5.77 6.40 0.035 0.30
XX SMS 0.74 51.06 0.695 0.62 55 12.12 11.91 0.035 0.49
CEC-type 0.70 42.61 0.695 0.52 45 9.86 9.76 0.035 0.64

For this simulation and performance comparison, Faro, Portugal consecutive rows. The scheme presented in Fig. 8 is based on ‘‘re-
(37°020 N, 07°550 W), was selected, with an annual average DNI of verse feeding” for automatic hydraulic balance. Table 6 summarizes
2234 kW h/m2/year (Meteonorm hourly DNI data software) (see the values chosen for the width of the different rows (Aw), distance
Appendix A). This calculation includes all optical losses which are between rows (AG). The value of AG was chosen as twice the value of
present when, as in practice, and every day, incident light is not AW to avoid mutual shading.
in the design perpendicular direction. Next there are several other efficiency definitions to consider,
In this paper both optical and thermal losses were considered. beyond the optical efficiency defined above.
The results are divided in two parts (optical and thermal perfor-
mance) for the sake of clarity. – K is the Incidence Angle Modifier (Rabl, 1985). It is calculated by
The results shown in Table 5 are related only to the optical per- finding out (through raytracing) the total amount of energy cap-
formance of the concentrators, i.e., without thermal losses. tured by the receiver, ER, for different hZ both on the transversal
From the results presented in Table 5 one can conclude that XX plane, (KT(hZ)) and on the longitudinal plane (KL(hZ)) divided by
SMS collects more energy than the PT and CEC-type, a result of the total amount at hZ = 0°. These curves are shown in Fig. 9.
having a much larger aperture width (higher CAP) while keeping – gint represents the intercept factor (Riffelmann et al., 2012);
the same overall optical tolerances (same peak acceptance- 0.95 was assumed for the PT concentrator and 0.98 for the XX
angle). This result is also consistent with the previous comment, SMS and CEC-type concentrators. This difference can be justi-
regarding the values of CAP obtained for each concentrator. How- fied with the fact that the later solutions use second-stage con-
ever, when seen per unit area of the entrance aperture, the PT centrators and, therefore, are more tolerant to misalignments,
emerges as advantageous (roughly 30% more energy on a sqm of manufacturing errors, etc., in comparison with the tolerance
aperture basis), since the effect of the higher optical efficiency of a PT concentrator.
and the shadow effect due to the absorber, is much reduced. – gT is the efficiency of the turbine for the corresponding value of
But this difference is expected to be substantially reduced if Tw. The lower values 380 °C and 540 °C are related with the
thermal losses are included and a collector field performance is cal- steam conversion efficiency.
culated. The higher concentration of the collectors with second – gs is the efficiency of the steam generation (from hot HTF to
stage concentrators will lead to substantially less thermal losses steam).
and much smaller receiver length with a correspondent smaller
number of rows for the same power on the collector field. This Table 7 summarizes the values attributed to these efficiencies in
topic will be addressed next. each case.
As for the number of rows (see Fig. 8) in each collector field (NR)
3.2. Energy delivered by a collector field a calculation can be done with Eq. (9):

Next a calculation is made of the performance of the three con- Ac

centrators with thermal losses. This analysis was done considering NR ¼ ð10Þ
Aperture Width
Aperture Length
a collector field for each concentrator type with the same total col-
lector area AC of 250,000 m2 for each system. Performance will be The result, in each case, is also in Table 7.
calculated at two different working temperatures Tw of 390 °C
(thermal oil as HTF) and 565 °C (molten salts as HTF). The field will
AW/2+AG/2
have rows of length (AL) of 500 m. Lout
The total length of connecting pipes is different in each case. As
shown in Fig. 8, Lin (length of the inlet connecting pipes) and Lout
(length of the outlet connecting pipes) can approximately be given
by (assuming that PL  AL):

Lin ¼ 2
ððAW þ AG Þ
ðNR  1ÞÞ ð8Þ AL

AG
Lout ¼ ðLin =2Þ þ ðAW =2 þ AG =2Þ þ AL ð9Þ
PL
where AP is the distance between two consecutive rows, Aw is the
aperture width of the concentrator and AG is the gap between two

Table 5
AW
Comparison of collected energy in Faro, Portugal (optical performance only). Lin
Optic DNI (kW h/m2/year) Collected energy Collected energy
Tin
(same vacuum per m2 of aperture
tube (kW h))a area (kW h/m2)a Tout
PT 2234 7166 1242 (AW+AG).(NR-1)
XX SMS 13,296 1097
CEC-type 10,556 1030 Fig. 8. Schematic representation of the loop of a solar system. The total length of
connecting pipes Lin and Lout are represented by the bold lines. Lin is given by Lin  2
a
For a receiver of 70 mm of diameter and 1 m of length. ((AW + AG)  (NR  1)) and Lout is given by Lout  Lin/2 + (AW/2 + AG/2) + AL.
390 D. Canavarro et al. / Solar Energy 134 (2016) 383–391

Table 6 Table 8
Dimensions of the systems. Thermal losses of the receiver tube and connecting pipes.

Optic AW (m) AL (m) AG (m) Lin (m) Lout (m) Tin Tout (Tw) Tm HR (W/m) HP (W/m)
(°C) (°C) (°C)
PT 5.77 500 11.54 2978 1998
XX SMS 12.12 500 24.24 2982 2009 290 390 340 152 (at 65 (at 290 °C); 90 (at
CEC-type 9.86 500 19.72 2958 1994 340 °C) 390 °C)
290 565 428 316 (at 65 (at 290 °C); 130 (at
428 °C) 565 °C)

K(θZ)
1.0

Table 9
0.8 T
Ecol of each system for TW = 390 °C and TW = 565 °C.
CEC-type)

KL(PT) Optic Ecol (380 °C) (kW h/m2) Ecol (540 °C) (kW h/m2)
0.6
PT 434 446
L
XX SMS 398 427
0.4
CEC-type 369 389
KL(CEC-type)

0.2

θZ perature goes up. The PT still has a better performance but the
20 40 60 80
other two come within 5% and 10% in electricity produced, while
Fig. 9. IAM curves of PT, XX SMS and CEC-type concentrators. from a strict optical point of view; differences were on the order
of 30% (Table 5) between the PT concentrator and the other two.
The conjecture is that a collector field built with larger concen-
In order to calculate the total amount of thermal energy col- trators will perhaps have a lower cost: each one of the second stage
lected by each system two more inputs are necessary: the thermal concentrators is roughly twice as large as the PT and on sqm basis
heat losses of the receiver tube, HR, and the thermal losses of the potentially cheaper, not forgetting the cost associated with the
connecting pipes, HP. evacuated tubular receivers, with a number of tubes which roughly
Table 8 summarizes the values of HR for the two working tem- half in the case the larger concentrators.
peratures are shown, as well as those for inlet and outlet connect- Plus less tubes and less piping are associated with less compo-
ing pipes Hp. nents (like flexible hosing or moving joints, valves, etc.) and less
where Tin is the temperature of the HTF at the entrance of the HTF, with certain impact on system costs. If these cost differences
receiver tube, Tout is the temperature of the HTF at the exit of the are larger than 5% or 10% there would be an incentive in adopting
receiver tube (matching the considered Tw temperatures) and Tm these new geometries.
is the mean temperature of the HTF given by: To summarize, an optical and thermal analysis of three
parabolic-type concentrators was presented. All concentrators
T in þ T out have the same tubular receiver (standard receiver used in practice)
Tm ¼ ð11Þ
2 and the same acceptance-angle (same optical tolerances). Using a
The values presented of HR are taken from an interpolation of commercial raytracing software, all the relevant optical parame-
the known data (SCHOTT PTR70, 2013). ters were calculated, namely gopt0 (optical efficiency at normal
Regarding the connecting pipe losses, HP, the values in Table 7 incidence), CAP and IAM curves (see Table 4 and Fig. 9). Addition-
result from a simple model of pipes insulated with rock wool ally, the total amount of collected energy for the particular location
(10 cm thick), assuming ambient temperature to be 15 °C. of Faro (Portugal) was calculated for an annual average DNI of
Performing this for each hour of the year (using a commercial 2234 kW h/m2 and assuming no thermal losses (see Table 5). Next,
raytracing software) yields the total electricity produced Ecol (Tw). a thermal/electric analysis was done considering a total collector
Again, calculations are done for a sunny Southern European loca- field area of 250,000 m2 for two different working temperatures
tion, Faro, Portugal (37°020 N, 07°550 W), with an annual average Tw of 390 °C (thermal oil as HTF) and 565 °C (molten salts as
DNI of 2234 kW h/m2 (Meteonorm hourly DNI data software) HTF). The dimensions and main characteristics of each field (num-
(see Appendix A). ber of rows, length of connecting pipes, turbine efficiency conver-
Table 9 shows the result on sqm of aperture area basis as a func- sion, etc.) were specifically considered (see Table 7) as well as the
tion of Tw for each concentrator type. In this calculation, startup thermal losses of the receiver tubes and connecting pipes for each
losses, lower dumping, upper dumping and auxiliary power losses Tw (see Table 8). In this calculation, startup losses, lower dumping,
(Morin et al., 2012) were not considered. upper dumping and auxiliary power losses were not considered.
Table 9 shows that there is an advantage, in all cases, of operat- Finally, taking the values of collected energy without thermal
ing with steam at 540 °C, even though collector and pipe thermal losses (see Table 5) all these thermal and electrical losses were
losses are higher, because the turbine as a higher conversion effi- computed in order to get a final value of electric produced energy
ciency at the higher temperature. It also shows that the difference per sqm, Ecol, for the two working temperatures Tw, as shown in
in performance of the various concentrator fields reduces as tem- Table 9.

Table 7
Basic assumptions for the energy delivery calculation for TW at 390 °C and 565 °C.

Optic Ac (m2) AL (m) gopt0 gS gint gT (380 °C) gT (540 °C) NR

PT 250,000 500 0.80 0.98 0.95 0.39 0.44 87
XX SMS 250,000 500 0.74 0.98 0.98 0.39 0.44 42
CEC-type 250,000 500 0.70 0.98 0.98 0.39 0.44 51
 D. Canavarro et al. / Solar Energy 134 (2016) 383–391 391

4. Conclusions Table A1
DNI value for Faro (Portugal) Meteonorm hourly DNI data software.

A new CEC-type concentrator for parabolic primaries has been Month DNI (kW h/m2)
presented and discussed, through comparisons with a conven- JAN 137
tional PT concentrator and a XX SMS concentrator for an evacuated FEB 114
tubular receiver. MAR 195
APR 168
The main motivation of this work is to contribute to finding
MAY 229
new ways to reduce costs in PT solar collector CSP systems. One JUN 244
possible way for achieving this goal is through the reduction of JUL 277
the number of rows in a collector field, for the same energy deliv- AGO 254
ered, with the associated reduction of receivers, pipe length, pipe SEP 213
OCT 181
losses, heat transfer fluid quantities, number of components, oper-
NOV 109
ational costs, etc. However, since the standard (i.e. on the market) DEC 113
evacuated receiver has a fixed diameter, it is very hard to do any-
Total 2234
thing about parabolic size, without completely revising the associ-
ated optics. This is what the present paper attempted at doing, by
proposing a new concept for PT–like concentration technology for
In short, the new CEC-type concentrator represents a practical
evacuated tubes, pushing to the limits the concentration achieved.
novelty, an in-between solution aimed for higher CAP values than
The new CEC was developed to provide higher concentration
the flow-lines concentrators and with less shading losses than
than that of conventional PT troughs without compromising (or
those of SMS concentrators. The main application of the particular
even increasing) the acceptance angle for incoming radiation asso-
type discussed in this paper is CSP but it can also be used as well
ciated with them, at the same time avoiding some of the inconve-
for other Solar Energy applications, like process heat, desalination
niences (for instance shading, size, etc.) of other alternative
or cooling, in conjunction with other receiver types (non-
solutions like the SMS concentrators. This new solution can be
evacuated, for instance) and/or with other diameters, for different,
viewed as a compromise, an in-between solution aiming for higher
perhaps more practical, aperture sizes.
CAP values than the flow-line concentrators and with less shading
losses that of the SMS concentrators.
The analysis of the merits of the new CEC concentrator was Appendix A.
done through a comparison with a conventional PT concentrator
and a XX SMS concentrator. This comparison was done in two Table A1 shows the DNI values used in this work.
parts. In the first part an optical analysis (no thermal losses
included) was done, presenting not only the design process of References
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