Short description

CEA (a French governmental organization) is involved in desalination since many years. Modelling of desalination systems and coupling these systems with heat and power sources is one of its activities in this field.

CEA built and qualified a solar collector prototype for medium temperature heat production. Many technical choices has been done to decrease the cost of the heat produced. 

Main technical features

For medium temperature heat for industry, a solar collector prototype of 6.6 m² mirrors aperture has been built and qualified. It is made up of 3 lines of parabolic trough.

Technical choices have been made to decrease the cost of the heat produced, such as :

• Parabolic trough module installation into a glasshouse to protect them from the wind and thus decrease the steel mass used for the mirror support.
• No use of commercial receiver using a glass envelop under vacuum, stainless steel tubes are used.
• No use of rotary joint nor flexible on both sides of the receiver: the mechanical design has been set so that the gravity center of the module is located on the absorber tube.
• Dust is deposed on the front glass window : easier cleaning
• Reflectors protected from external aggressions: lifetime increased.
• Development of a shadow band tracking system: low cost tracking system that does not require a precise alignment of the collector to south.

Mechanical design expertise has been improved optimizing the module to decrease as much as possible its weight. 3 module prototypes with different mechanical designs were built in a first step.

Shape measurement and optical modeling of these prototypes has been performed.

Overall performance was theoretically evaluated and compared to experimental results of overall qualification.

For detail information, please contact us

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