Comparison of thermal and optical performance of Linear Fresnel and Parabolic Trough Concentrator

Producing electricity from solar energy collected by the different solar concentrator technologies has taken a great interest in recent decades. Concentrating solar technologies are in different stages of development, most of them have passed the testing phases reaching the commercial market. In this paper a comparison between the thermal performances of the most promising two collector technologies, i.e. Linear Fresnel Collector (LFC) and Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC), was carried out. The comparison is based on power/land consumption ratio, optical and thermal efficiency at nominal conditions. A numerical simulation of the optical and the thermal performance of both collector technologies was built using the Engineering Equation Solver (EES) software. From the output results, the PTC confirmed its better optical and thermal performance, while the LFC has shown a better use of the land.