Experimental Investigation of Parabolic Trough-Type Solar Collector Integrated with Storage Tank Under the Northern Indian Climatic Conditions

Currently, the trough-type solar collector incorporated with storage unit is receiving significant attention because of their capacity to retain excess heat during non-availability of insolation. Thus, the objective of present study is to investigate the trough collector thermal performance which is built-in with storage container experimentally. The study is performed for south-facing and tracking modes of working in the end of November month. The performance is estimated in terms of collector thermal efficiency, gain in useful heat, storage tank water temperature rise, system overall and charging efficiency by fabricating and testing the simple structure of parabolic trough collector (PTC) system. Results show that PTC is capable to heat the water stored in the storage tank during both modes of working. The highest collector thermal efficiency is obtained as 54.4 and 53.04% during south-facing and tracking modes, respectively. The maximum system charging efficiency is found to be 87.98% in south-facing and 89.8% in tracking modes.