UNIT 2

SOLAR ENERGY COLLECTION

SOLAR THERMAL ENERGY SYSTEM
• Passive solar thermal energy system
• Active solar thermal energy system
Basic components
• Solar collector
• Storage unit
• Load
• Auxiliary source
 Some Active solar thermal energy system
Solar water heater
PV cells or solar cells
Concentrated solar power
 Application of Passive and
Active solar thermal energy system
 Solar collector
• Used to collecting the solar radiation and
transfer the energy to fluid passing in contact
with it.
• No concentrating and flat plate collector
• Concentrating collector
 Characteristics of solar collector

• Types of solar collector

• Temperature of working fluid
• Whether tracing system used or not
• Cost of solar collector
• Design of solar collector
• Layout and configuration solar collector
 Performance indices of solar collector

• Concentration ratio
• Temperature range
• Absorption / reflection ratio
• Collector efficiency
• concentration ratio of solar concentration is
the ratio of solar radiation entering
the collector to solar radiation received by the
receiver. It represents the system's ability to
concentrate solar energy
Absorption / reflection ratio
Temperature attained by the heat tarnsport of
liquid
Range : 1 to 40
Collector efficiency
Energy collected by collector / energy incident
on the collector
Factors affecting the solar collector system.

• 1. shadow effect
• 2.cosine loss factor
• 3.Reflective loss factor
• Collector shadowing means a reduction in the
net aperture area, so reducing the amount of
thermal energy that can be supplied by
the solar field. ... This means that the land
area required to install a plant is around four
times the solar field area, partially due to the
separation among solar collector rows.
• The result indicates that the cosine loss of M-
H collector is as low as 1%.
Concentrated solar power generation uses
mirrors or lens to condense large areas of low-
density sunlight into small areas of high-
density sunlight, then electricity is generated
by photovoltaic or photothermal action 
Physical principle of the conversion of solar
radiation into heat
 Flat plate collector
• Liquid heat collector
• Air heat collector
• Evacuated tubular collector
Liquid heat collector
Orientation of flat plate collector
Orientation of flat plate collector
Modified flat plate collectors
Solar air heater
Evacuated tubular collector
 Concentrating Collector
A concentrating collector comprises a
receiver, where the radiation is absorbed and
converted to some other energy form, and a
concentrator, which is the optical system that
directs beam radiation onto the receiver.
In concentrating collectors, solar energy is
optically concentrated before being
transferred into heat.
Concentrating Collector
Parabolic Trough Collector
Paraboloidal Dish Collector
Mirror Strip Reflector
Fresnel lens Collector
Flat plate collector with booster mirror
Compound parabolic concentrator