Experimental Investigation on the Effect of Partially Metal Foam inside the Absorber of Parabolic Trough Solar Collector

In the present work the efficiency of a solar parabolic trough has been investigated experimentality. parabolic trough solar collector constitute a proven source of thermal energy for industrial process heat and power genaration. The impact of using the partially porous media in the absorber on the efficiency of PTC (parabolic trough collector) has been investigated. The porosity of copper foam is 0.9 and the pore density is 30 PPI (pores per inch). The experiments were performed in different volume flow rates from 0.5 to 1.5 Lit/min and the standard of ASHRAE 93 was used to test the solar collector’s performance. Results illustrate that using metal foam in the absorber has a positive impact on the collector efficiency and increases the pressure drop in the absorber. When absorber filled with metal foam the overall loss coefficient UL decreases 45% and it causes to increase efficiency because less energy is lost.