Thermal performance study of a parabolic trough collectoer based on heat transfer oil

Based on the parabolic trough collector developed by ourselves, an experiment system is established to evaluate the thermal performance of the parabolic trough collector. Experiments on the thermal performance of the parabolic trough collector have been carried out at different thermal and fluid conditions. Experimental results show that peak efficiency of the parabolic trough collector exceeds 70% at a average thermal oil temperature of 305°C and is close to that level of the commrcialized EUROTRGH collectors, which implies that steel structure of the collector is good and error of the tracking and driving system is very low.