An Experimental Investigation of a Nanofluid (Al2O3+H2O) Based Parabolic Trough Solar Collectors

In the present work the effect of working fluid (Al2O3 + water nanofluid) on the efficiency of a parabolic trough solar collector was investigated experimentally. The weight fraction of nano particles was 0.1% and the particles dimension was 40 nm. Experiments were performed with and without nanofluid. The mass flow rate of nanofluid is constant at 2 Lit/min. The results shows that, nanofluid based parabolic trough collector has higher efficiency than water based parabolic trough collector. For 0.1%, the increased solar thermal efficiency was nearly 7%. From the results, it can be concluded that the nanofluid causes an enhancement in heat transfer coefficient by 32%. The paper presents the preparation of nanofluid, calculation of nanofluids properties, test result and performance evaluation of Parabolic Trough Solar Collectors with and without nanofluids.