The state of the art in modelling line-axis concentrating solar energy collectors

To enable accurate predictions of the thermo-physical performance of line-axis concentrating solar energy collectors to be made, a unified approach that allows detailed consideration of both the thermal and optical behaviour in such systems was developed. Employing ray-trace techniques, the incident energy distributions at the surfaces of the components of line-axis systems are determined, for both diffuse and direct constituents of the incident insolation. To calculate accurately the temperatures and air velocities within the collector, the energy fluxes determined with the ray trace technique, are incorporated into the boundary conditions of a in-house developed, finite element model for predicting the thermo-fluid behaviour in line-axis systems.