UC Merced

In this thesis, an effort is made to observe the underlying principles for the improvements of medium high temperature solar thermal collectors, specifically, the optic design and the absorber shape design for vacuum tubes. A number of solar thermal collectors, with optimized optics, heat transfer and production procedure are tried, examined and analyzed. The different possible parameters of the design are often tried out in an early simulation stage, followed with a fabrication of the prototype, and eventually an experimental result to both prove and measure the efficiency of small scale implementation. Depending on the result, an iterative process is repeated with the steps above to perfect the prototype, until it is ready for commercialization. Through many such iterations, the thesis will showcase and summarize the lessons that have been learned from an engineering point of view.