Abstract

                                A study on performance evaluation and development of a model to predict the daily steam produced from solar paraboloid concentrator has been carried out. Dual-axis point-focus solar paraboloid concentrators of four numbers with cavity receivers were installed for steam production and the steam produced was used for cooking applications in Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. Convection losses were the significant losses when compared conduction and convection losses resulting in 24.5% thermal efficiency of the system. Multiple linear regression (MLR) was used to predict the linear relationship between variables. MLR predicted the steam production with 0.63 R². Among the input variables used, solar radiation was the only parameter that had significant effect on daily steam production.

Key words : Solar paraboloid concentrator, Cavity receiver, MLR.