Heat flux and temperature measurements on glass envelope and bellows of parabolic trough receivers

This paper reports heat flux measurements on parabolic trough receivers, which are integrated to calculate the receiver overall heat loss. Integrated heat fluxes yield an overall heat loss value which agrees with DLR ThermoRec heat loss measurements within ± 5 %, in the simplified case of assuming a homogeneous heat flux distribution around the receiver circumference. Heat flux measurements also allow separating glass envelope and shielded bellow heat loss terms for receiver thermal modelling. Shielded bellows only represent 3 to 4 % of the receiver total length at ambient temperature, however heat flux measurements show that their contribution to the overall receiver heat loss ranges from 5 to 15 %, depending on the shield construction and the absorber temperature. The receiver specific heat loss thus tends to lie above the glass envelope specific heat loss. Almost homogeneous heat flux values are measured along the glass envelope length (variation below 5 %), while more inhomogeneous heat flux values are observed over circumference of the glass envelope (variation between top and side of 17 %). The measurement setup analysis shows a good repeatability, although a proper mounting of heat flux sensors is important in order to avoid systematic biases.