Author(s)

Mariella Mateo¹, Rodolfo Echarri^2,3, Inna Samsón¹

¹Laboratorio de Energías Alternativas, Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
²Instituto del Desarrollo Humano, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
³Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This work presents an algorithm able to simulate the heating of a solar collector throughout the day. The discussed collector is part of a solar adsorption refrigerator, and is used to regenerate the activated carbon contained inside a cylindrical recipient (absorber), which is located in the focal line of a parabolic trough concentrator. The developed algorithm takes into account all the transfer mechanisms when analyzing the heat transfers taking place between the collector’s components and the environment, as well as the transfer mechanisms towards the absorber’s interior. The temperature evolution for the collector’s elements is obtained, and the model is validated by comparing the experimentally measured surface temperature of the absorber with the one determined by the algorithm. The experimental data were gathered from similar collectors in two different scenarios: Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and Buenos Aires (Argentina). The model is satisfactorily validated with experimental data.

Mathematical Model, Heat Transfer, Parabolic Trough Collector, Solar Adsorption Refrigerator

Mateo, M. , Echarri, R. and Samsón, I. (2017) Thermal Analysis and Experimental Validation of Parabolic Trough Collector for Solar Adsorption Refrigerator. Energy and Power Engineering, 9, 687-702. doi: 10.4236/epe.2017.911044.