Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Inflated cylindrical solar concentrator

Conference ·
OSTI ID:6722340
A concentrating solar collector is being developed to produce pressurized hot water up to a temperature of 170/sup 0/C. The collector structure consists mainly of an inflated thin-film plastic cylinder that is clear on the upper portion and is an aluminized reflector on the lower portion. The reflector concentrates sunlight on a receiver tube which is jacketed with a heat transfer suppressing, thin-film plastic cylinder. Because of its simplicity and large size, we believe this collector will be able to produce steam competitively with that produced by fossil fuels such as oil. Computer codes were written to analyze the optical and thermal properties of this collector. Results indicate that weekly tilting of the collector provides over 90% of the energy available from continuous tracking. Combining calculated optical and thermal efficiencies gives an overall collector efficiency of 20% for 170/sup 0/C operation. Our first experimental collectors are 8m long with an outer diameter of 1m.
Research Organization:
California Univ., Livermore (USA). Lawrence Livermore Lab.
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
6722340
Report Number(s):
UCRL-81250; CONF-780808-1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English