ABSTRACT
The compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) is a two-dimensional concentrator designed for capturing and concentrating a radiation field with a given angular aperture, onto a flat receiver. The edge rays of the incoming radiation come from the edges of the source, and are concentrated onto the edges of the receiver. The concentrator thus obtained is called the compound elliptical concentrator (CEC) because it is composed of two arcs of ellipses. The string method can be adapted to the case where the source of radiation is placed at infinity. A CEC is a device allowing to concentrate radiation coming from a source at a finite distance. The CPC would accept more radiation, and have a higher concentration in winter, than in summer. This situation could, nonetheless, be inverted if the CPC was used, for example, in a heating system or in an air conditioning system.
