News ‒ SCI-ENAC-AS ‐ EPFL

Internship on modelling and measuring concentrating solar collectors

Concentrating solar collectors allow to reach elevated temperatures for production of industrial process heat. Compound Parabolic Concentrators (CPCs) can achieve this goal even without any mechanical tracking of the sun’s position.

Arnaud Eichwald, a student from INSA Lyon who has joined our research group for a 5-month internship, focuses on theoretical modelling and experimental characterization of our recent CPC prototype. The optical behavior of the system is simulated by forward ray-tracing, while the mechanisms of heat transfer are studied by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

The theoretical results are compared to the experimental measurements of the prototype, allowing a deeper understanding of the characteristics of the system and the various phenomena that take place.