Modelación y simulación de un receptor trapezoidal de un colector solar lineal Fresnel mediante OpenFOAM

Abstract

Linear Fresnel Collectors (LFC) are an alternative for the exploitation of solar energy in developing countries such as Ecuador. The study and optimization of LFC’s represent an opportunity for reducing the carbon print caused by different industrial processes in which a source of medium temperature heat is needed. Therefore, this work introduces the thermal modeling and simulation of a trapezoidal linear Fresnel receiver with OpenFOAM. The results are compared with similar studies of different previous researchers. The input data for incident solar energy is taken from optical studies of previous authors. In addition, a detailed guide for setting the simulation case is presented, which will be useful for future studies on Linear Fresnel Collectors using OpenFOAM.