Compound Parabolic Collectors (CPC)

Recent addition to heating water and thermic oil in western countries is Compound Parabolic Collector (CPC) which is a combination of both concentrator and the receiver. It works on cloudy/ diffused radiation days also. MNRE has enrolled SUN BEST as a channel partner on CST technologies and has awarded SUN BEST with an Excellence Award for its active contribution!

Concentrating and pipe type solar collector is a new kind of device to collect energy. It consists of compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) which is non-tracing concentrated and vacuum hot-tube collector (receiver). On the basis of edge-ray principle, CPC can collect incident rays within the specified scope by the ideal concentration ratio onto the receiver. The vacuum hot-tube collector converts the solar energy to heat energy, and the medium transfers the heat energy to water.

Key characteristics of CPC systems include:

Large collecting scale and high efficiency
No water in the vacuum tubes – It means that even the tube breaks up, no water leaks.
Pressurized running
Arbitrary placement and moderated temperature collector
Efficiency of above 60%.

CPC collectors could operate up to 6 bar pressure and reach a maximum temperature 160 degree Celsius, but efficiently in the range of 90-100 degree Celsius. The CPC collectors have shown that even when the radiation was 1/5th of the sunny period, it could able to heat the water and rise the temperature by 5-10 degree Celsius!

SUN BEST CPC Applications

Because of their high performance these systems could provide significant energy output mainly on large level water heating projects across industries

Leather industry – auto sprayer, tunnel dryer, toggle unit, calendaring unit
Industrial degreasing plant
Textile – dying units, relax dryer, stender dryer, tumble dryer etc.
Other industrial process heat

Go to Key Solar CPC based Water Heating Projects