About

Solar systems have been extensively used for the last decades since they can deliver low cost heating in the domestic and industrial sector. Solar thermal collectors can be classified in non-concentrating and concentrating systems. The latter group can achieve higher performance than the former. However, the use of a tracking system is mandatory in order to exhibit stable performance throughout the year.

The SCoSCo project (Solar Collectors with Static Concentrators) constitutes an international collaboration between Germany and Greece and additional partners such as the German Company, Heliokon GmbH and the Greek Company, Calpak S.A in order to design an innovative solar thermal collector operating at intermediate and medium temperatures. This project consists of 8 work packages that include designing, optical modeling and thermal modeling of solar thermal systems as well as the planning of the experimental part (setup and data acquisition system).

In more detail, the first step was the designing of the systems in 3 dimensions, using software packages such as AutoCAD® and FreeCAD. The systems were designed according to the most promising collectors that are found in the literature and were compared with an innovative concentrating solar collector that has been proposed by our team. Additionally, optical simulations regarding the solar collectors took place using appropriate software packages such as Tonatiuh, Soltrace Solstice and COMSOL Multiphysics® where their performance in the short term and long term was evaluated. Finally, regarding the simulation part, thermal modelling of the systems and components was investigated using CARNOT toolbox on MATLAB Simulink®.

Subsequently, in order to cope with the large amounts of data obtained from the simulations, software routines were specifically compiled with Python and SQL to accurately represent the intercept factor as a function of the solar incidence angle in a daily and yearly basis.

The prototype concentrator that was proposed by our team (MicroHelix design), exhibited the best performance according to the simulations and is being manufactured using state of the art equipment by Calpak (Greece) and Heliokon GmbH located in Germany. The materials that will be incorporated in the prototypes are of high optical characteristics and great endurance in medium temperatures. Furthermore, to achieve verification of the results that will be obtained from the aforementioned experiments, multiple prototypes will be manufactured and will be subjected to similar experiments in the University of Patras (Greece) as well as in the Solar-Institut Jülich (SIJ) in Germany.