Obtaining hot water with parabolic dish collector

In this study the aim is to obtain hot water by use of a parabolic mirror which is capable of tracking sun in two axes. In order to achieve the purpose, two mechanisms containing parabolic mirrors of 70 cm was used. A belt-pulley mechanism and a linear actuator mechanism was used. A heat exchanger made from copper with the shape of a spiral was designed at the focal point of the system as an absorber. As the working fluid water was used. Water coming from the water network is heated in the absorber and leave to the atmosphere. In order to understand the effect of the irradiation value on the outlet temperature, experiments were repeated at three different days between 10:00 and 16:30 hours. Besides, to determine the effect of the flow rate on efficiency, three experiments with three different mass flow values were conducted which are 0.00187, 0.00217 and 0.00345 kg/s. With the use of this system 0.5 L water's temperature was increased by 10°C in 145 seconds. An increase of 8.5 to 17.6 °C was observed, which varies with the flow rate. Thermal efficiency of %32-%39 was observed for the system. At the flow rate of 0.00187 kg/s, because the system's inlet and outlet temperatures differ greatly, the maximum useful temperature was achieved. The model of the system was made by the CFD program the output temperatures, fluid velocities and temperature distributions in the system were simulated. A difference of %6 was seen in the outlet temperatures of the system by comparisons of the simulation results and the experiments.