The Development of Software SOLEEC for Parabolic Trough Solar Collector Designing

The current paper explains SOLEEC, a numerical method for designing PTC (parabolic trough collector). SOLEEC software is divided into two sections. The first allows for the measurement of solar resources for a particular location on Earth and can be performed for a specific day of the year, average values for a specific month, and monthly averages across the year. When the average values along the year option is chosen, the user can obtain annual charts such as: solar constant, Earth declination, insolation hours, and sunrise and sunset hours. The second part comprises the PTC collector designing and assessment, that is, using options one and two, the user can get five different designs based on receiver outer diameter evaluating solar radiation data along the full year or only one solar radiation value (monthly), on the other hand, options three and four were developed to compute the thermal evaluation for an operating collector for twelve solar radiation values (annually) or only one average value (monthly), respectively. The computational tool is used for Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the software is applied for a PTC collector designing, the results show that the place has a good solar resource to be used as thermal energy, having a maximum value of in November. The software provides to the user thermal parameters such as: heat gain, heat losses, thermal efficiency and the minimal mass flow to reach the desired temperature, in function of the materials selected for the PTC collector designing and the geometrical parameters.