Thermal analysis of parabolic trough collectors via a swarm intelligence optimizer

The current study deals with developing an efficient strategy to solve the governing equations of the parabolic trough collectors' heat transfer. In the proposed approach, available system of equations is converted into a single objective constrained optimization problem. Subsequently, the thermal properties of the system are gained via solving proposed optimization problem. This target should be met via implementing an appropriate optimization technique as a solver tool. In this respect, integrated particle swarm optimization (iPSO) is utilized as an efficient optimization method. The objective function of the proposed optimization problem computes the heat losses through the discretized cross-section of the receiver tube. To reduce the model complexity, the receiver tube is modeled in one-dimensional form. In addition, the thermal equilibrium of the entire system is implemented as the constraint of the optimization problem. The validity of the obtained outcomes is assessed via comparing them with existing practical results addressed in Sandia National Laboratory (SNL) reports. The comparison reveals that the achieved theoretical outcomes are in the good agreement with the experimental results.