Mechanical & Marine Engineering

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http://196.216.167.205/handle/10628/258

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Browsing Mechanical & Marine Engineering by Author "Swaminathan, Rajaram"

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    Design and development of solar concentrator for thermal applications.
    (NUST, 2010) Bishi, Isabel; Zulu, Andrew; Swaminathan, Rajaram
    Parabolic mirror surfaces are found wherever energy needs to be focused effectively and accurately. They are found built into car headlights, spotlights as well as astronomical telescopes. This research concerns the study of transformation of solar energy into thermal energy and focusing this energy at a point to heat water. In this document the parabola was explored to design a simple, cheap and effective solar water heater. Local communities in Namibia can produce similar water heaters using available materials and the fuel; sunlight is abundant throughout the year in most areas. The main part of the heater, the collector can have any shiny material as long as it refracts the sun’s rays. In this project a parabolic solar concentrator was designed and constructed to heat water at the focal point, which is then stored in a tank for use.
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    Development of a sun tracking system for a small solar concentrator.
    (NUST, 2010) Mutaleni, C.; Bishi, Isabel; Zulu, Andrew; Swaminathan, Rajaram
    An automatic sun tracking system was extended to a parabolic dish solar concentrator which can be used to cook or heat water. Parabolic dish solar concentrator has been in use couple of decades ago but has been tracking the sun manually. The automatic sun tracking system was incorporated on the parabolic dish with success and it works satisfactory. Every time the dish was left in the sun, it was found facing the sun as expected. These systems has been researched and developed before and applied on large scale applications like solar power generation plants and small electricity generation projects for remote areas which are not connected to national power grids.