Optical Design and Efficiency Analysis of A New Medium Temperature Parabolic Trough Collector

Nowadays, the demand for medium temperature utilization of solar energy is becoming wide, not only in the field of building energy, but also in some industrial fields. While, the application of parabolic trough collector in the field of medium temperature requires to meet appropriate concentration ratio, compact construction and low initial cost. In this study, we proposed an optical design for small and medium sized parabolic trough collector. During the experiment, the Monte Carlo ray tracing method (MCRT) was used to calculate the peak optical efficiency of the collector, and the annual average optical efficiency of the DaXing District of Beijing was calculated by System Advisor Model (SAM). Finally, by comparing with mature products, the calculation results show that our design is feasible.