Volume 18: Sustainable Energy Solutions for a Post-COVID Recovery towards a Better Future: Part I

Modelling of the Flow and Heat Transfer of Microalgae Slurry in a Parabolic Trough Collector Driven by Solar Energy Chen Qicheng, Han Wei, Yu Yang, Dong Nanhang

Abstract

In this paper, flow and heat transfer characteristics of microalgae slurry in the absorber tube of a solar-driven parabolic trough collector was studied numerically. Several viscosity models were introduced to describe the rheological property which would determine the flow pattern. Meanwhile the proposed model accomplished with the temperature term was optimized by the experimental data. Different thermal conductivities were employed to improve the heat transfer process which was described in the cases of different microalgae concentrations and heat fluxes. The relevant results reveal that the temperature field dominates the viscosity discrepancy in the dilute microalgae slurry while the shear thinning effect will be enhanced with the increasing microalgae condensation. The established model is supposed to represent the non-Newtonian pseudo-plastic fluid flow in the hydrothermal pretreatment system which will introduce a direct method to investigate the heat transfer process. Hence the enhanced heat transfer techniques could be applied to accelerate the recovery techniques of solar energy by microalgae hydrothermal utilization.

Keywords solar energy, microalgae-based biofuels, micro-channel, flow and heat transfer, parabolic trough collector