HelioTrough thermal performance compared to EuroTrough

Parabolic troughs are the most mature technology and have lowest cost compared to other technologies. A comparison between EuroTrough and HelioTrough is carried out in this work. An energy balance model for the trough´s absorber tube is used to estimate the optical and thermal losses from the collector. Engineering Equation Solver (EES) was used as a tool to simulate the trough. Results show that the thermal losses from the HelioTrough are more that loss from EuroTrough. Although this fact, the total energy gained from the HelioTrough is much more than EuroTrough.