Design, fabrication and performance evaluation of solar parabolic Trough collector

In this paper an attempt has been made to design and fabricateand evaluate the performance of parabolic trough collector to produce hot water. In the design of PTC it was considered the parabolic aperture of 2.007m x1.0622m made up of acrylic mirror sheet as a reflector material and Galvanised iron pipe was used for receiver material. The results of the evaluation to determine the thermal performance of the parabolic trough collector have a maximum outlet temperature of 55oC and the corresponding maximum thermal efficiency calculated was 10.67%.