Investigation of energy and exergy performance of parabolic trough solar collector with wind speed variations

In this study, the effect of wind speed on the energy and exergy efficiencies of the LS-2 parabolic trough solar collector have been studied. The wind speed on the reflector and receiver has been considered between zero and 27 m/s. Three working fluids of Therminol VP-1, Syltherm 800 and Dowtherm A have been used. The results showed that at the inlet fluid temperature of 650 K and volumetric flow rate of 50 L/min, if the wind speed increases to 27 m/s, the energy efficiency decreases using Therminol VP-1, Syltherm 800 and Dowtherm A are 0.87%, 1.16% and 0.85%, respectively and the exergy efficiency decreases are 0.88%, 1.18% and 0.86%, respectively. Also the results showed that the variations of energy and exergy efficiencies for wind speeds greater than 10 m/s are negligible. The results indicated that although wind speed increase has little effect on the energy and exergy efficiencies of the collector, but the rate of these decreases are comparable with the rate of efficiency increases observed in previous studies using different efficiency enhancement strategies such as turbulators and nanofluids, so wind speed is important. The performance evaluation study revealed that using Therminol VP-1 and Dowtherm A are more suitable than Syltherm 800 to be used as working fluids in parabolic trough solar collectors.