To provide a comprehensive review of additive manufacturing use in heat transfer improvement and to carry out the economic feasibility of additive manufacturing compared to conventional manufacturing. Heat transfer improvement is particularly interesting for different industrial sectors due to its economic, practical, and environmental benefits. Three heat transfer improvement techniques are used: active, passive, and compound.According to numerous studies on heat transfer enhancement devices, most configurations with strong heat transfer performance are geometrically complex. Thus, those configurations cannot be easily manufactured using conventional manufacturing. With additive manufacturing, almost any configuration can be manufactured, with the added benefit that the produced parts’ surface characteristics can enhance heat transfer. It can, however, lead to a significant pressure drop increase that will reduce the overall performance. In the given article, a comparison of the capital cost of a 100 MW parabolic trough power plant has been carried out, considering two types of solar receivers; the first is manufactured using conventional methods, and the second uses additive manufacturing. The heat transfer of the new receiver configuration is investigated using computational fluid dynamics through ANYS Fluent.Although the cost of additive manufacturing machines and materials is high compared to conventional manufacturing, the outcome revealed that the gain in efficiency when using additive-manufactured receivers leads to a reduction in the number of receiver tubes and the number of solar collectors needed in the solar field It implies a considerable reduction of parabolic trough collector plant capital cost, which is 20.7%. It can, therefore, be concluded that, even if initial setup expenses are higher, additive manufacturing could be more cost-effective than traditional manufacturing.With the reduction of the parabolic trough collector plant capital cost, the levelized cost of electricity will eventually be reduced, which will play a role in increasing the use of solar thermal energy.No review studies discuss the manufacturing potential and cost-effectiveness potential of additive manufacturing when producing heat transfer improvement equipment, especially when producing long pieces. In addition, the paper uses a novel receiver configuration to investigate the economic aspect.

This paper conducts a numerical investigation of the performance improvement of a Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC) receiver using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations performed in ANSYS Fluent. The study aims to evaluate novel receiver configurations by comparing a conventional receiver (Case 1) with three innovative configurations (Cases 2, 3, and 4), using liquid sodium as the heat transfer fluid (HTF). The model’s accuracy is validated against experimental data and theoretical expressions from the literature. Simulations are performed across various mass flow rates to assess key parameters, including the Nusselt number, friction coefficient, thermal efficiency, and circumferential temperature difference. The results indicate that Case 3 demonstrates the highest thermal performance among the configurations. Specifically, the novel receiver configurations consistently outperformed the conventional receiver. The Nusselt number increased by 29.84%, 126.1%, and 10%; the friction factor rose by 178%, 305%, and 17%; the thermal efficiency improved by 3.6%, 4%, and 3.4%; and the temperature difference decreased by 4.05%, 13.2%, and 1.31% for Confs 2, 3, and 4, respectively. Additionally, liquid sodium significantly enhanced the thermal performance of the PTC due to its superior thermal properties. These findings underscore the effectiveness of the proposed receiver configurations and the advantages of using liquid sodium as the HTF, offering a promising approach to improving PTC efficiency.