Nanotechnology Applications for Solar Energy Systems

5 Nanofluids in Linear Fresnel Reflector

Evangelos Bellos^1,*, Zafar Said^2,3,4, and Christos Tzivanidis¹

¹ Thermal Department, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece² Department of Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of Sharjah, P.O. Box 27272, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates³ Department of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, Lebanese American University (LAU), Byblos, Lebanon⁴ U.S.-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Energy (USPCAS-E), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan^* Corresponding author

5.1 Introduction and Recent Advances of Linear Fresnel Reflectors

Linear Fresnel reflector (LFR) is a linear concentrating technology that can operate with an optical concentration ratio from 10 up to 50 [1]. This technology usually operates up to 400^oC, while there are also designs for operation up to 500–600^oC. The working fluids of this collector are thermal oil (up to 400^oC) [2], molten salt (up to 600^oC) [3], or water/steam for applications that demand steam production (e.g., Rankine cycle) [4]. Moreover, it is important to state that the LFR can be applied in various applications such as cooling [5], desalination [6], industrial heat [7], chemical process [8], and power generation [9]. Practically, the possibility of operating in high temperatures makes LFR highly compatible with many applications.

Usually, the LFR is compared with the parabolic trough collector (PTC) because ...