This document discusses the design and development of a prototype cylindrical parabolic solar collector with an aperture area of 1.89 m2. The collector is designed using low-cost, highly reflective and absorbing materials to reduce costs and improve thermal efficiency. Testing showed the system can generate hot water at an average temperature of 50°C per day with an average efficiency of 49%, higher than flat plate collectors. The hot water produced can be used for domestic, agricultural, and industrial applications.

1. ABSTRACT
Concentrating collectors absorbs solar energy and convert it into heat for generating hot
water, steam at required temperature, which can be further used for solar thermal applications.
The developing countries like India where solar energy is abundantly available; there is need to
develop technology for harnessing solar energy for power production, but the main problem
associated with concentrating solar power technology is the high cost of installation and low
output efficiency. To solve this problem, a prototype cylindrical parabolic solar collector having
aperture area of 1.89 m2 is designed and developed using low cost highly reflecting and
absorbing material to reduce initial cost of project and improve thermal efficiency. ASHRAE
Standard 93, 1986 was used to evaluate the thermal performance and it was observed that this
system can generate hot water at an average temperature of 500C per day with an average
efficiency of 49% which is considerable higher than flat plate solar collectors. Hot water
produced by this system can be useful for domestic, agricultural, industrial process heat
applications.
INTRODUTION
Recent increase in energy demand and constraints in supply of energy becomes a priority
for the different industry [1]. Very few research attempts have been done to estimate the
significance of energy required for the different process. In this experimental study alternative
use of solar energy has been studied. Solar energy is a hightemperature, high-exergy radiant
energy source, with tremendous advantages over other alternative energy sources. It is a reliable,
domestic, robust renewable resource with large undeveloped potential, and it emits essentially
none of the atmospheric emissions that are of growing concern. The design and fabrication of
parabolic trough solar water heater for water heating was executed. The procedure employed
includes the design, construction and testing stages. The equipment which is made up of the
reflector surface (curved mirror), reflector support, absorber pipe and a stand was fabricated
using locally sourced materials. This work presents a reproducible parabolic trough solar water
heater as a suitable renewable technology for reducing water-heating costs and solar water
heating systems with optical concentrating technologies as important entrants for providing
needed bulk solar energy [2]. Parabolic trough power plants are the only types of solar thermal
power plant technology with existing commercial operating systems. Parabolic- trough collectors

2. ( ) are frequently employed for solar steam- generation because temperatures of about 300 can be
obtained without any serious degradation in the collector’s efficiency.
OBJECTIVE
Solar energy is gaining much attention as a result of the increasing natural gas and oil prices and
environmental concerns. And majority of the non renewable resources are at the verge of
depletion and the prices are soaring, the petroleum prices have increased from $ 18.5 in 2000 to
$132 per barrel in 2008, and the environmental concerns caused by the burning of these fuels is
greater. So our objective is to harness the solar energy efficiently and effectively and use this
waste energy to produce useful energy and thus reducing the dependence on non renewable solar
energy. We are developing this solar collector and analysis of the adsorption system as a
pioneering works in solar research in our college. This solar collector can be used for further
research by the future batches
PARABOLIC TROUGH COLLECTOR
Parabola has unique property that all Sun rays falling on aperture of Parabolic Trough will
ultimately be focused onto Receiver i.e. Focal Point. The most important designing aspect in
Parabolic Collectors is to calculate Focal Point accurately. This is the point where we have
ZERO tolerance.
(Parabolic Solar Trough Concentrator)

3. REFERNCES
[1] Timilsina GR, Kurdgelashvili L, Narbel PA, A review of solar energy markets,
economics and policies. Policy Research Working Paper; 2011.
[2] Xiaowu W, Ben H. Exergy analysis of domestic-scale solar water heaters. Renew
Sustain Energy Rev 2005;9(6):638–45.
[3] Wang X, Wang R, Wu J. Experimental investigation of a new-style double-tube heat
exchanger for heating crude oil using solar hot water. ApplThermEng 2005;25(11–
12):1753– 63.
[4] Al-Madani H. The performance of a cylindrical solar water heater. Renew Energy
2006;31(11):1751–63.
[5] Ho CD, Chen TC. The recycle effect on the collector efficiency improvement of double-
pass sheet-and-tube solar water heaters with external recycle. Renew Energy
2006;31(7):953–70.