A Heat Transfer Analysis for Passively Cooled “Trumpet” Secondary Concentrators

Abstract

Some practical questions associated with the use of hyperboloidal “trumpet” shaped terminal concentrators for use in solar thermal applications are addressed. Computer ray-trace calculations show that the flux distribution is strongly peaked over a small neck area at the exit of the trumpet, which will be subjected to a substantial thermal load. A quasi-transient heat transfer model has been developed to analyze the thermal behavior of passively cooled trumpets. The thermal analysis shows that simple techniques exist such that one can design passive secondary trumpets which will remain below safe temperature limits under normal operation for many applications. The wall thickness and its variation along the body of the bell-shaped shell from the exit are found to play an important role in controlling the temperature at all flux levels. As a check on the validity of the model, a set of electrical simulation experiments was conducted and excellent agreement was found.