In solar thermal systems, the receiver plays an important role in determining the overall system
efficiency [1-3]. Consequently, increasing the efficiency of the thermal receiver by reducing the
optical and thermal losses is essential for increasing the overall efficiency of the system [4-6]. This
paper investigates various configurations of open cavity solar receivers including cylindrical, conical
and spherical using advanced ray tracing technique (OptisWorks) and computational fluid dynamic
(CFD, ANSYS 15.0) simulation to reduce optical and thermal losses and maximise exit temperature of
the working fluid. Figure 1 shows the geometries of the three receivers including the helical coil used
for the heat transfer fluid flow with an aperture of 0.03 m2
. Figure 2, shows the flux distribution inside
these cavities based on received flux of 4.5e5 W/m2
. Figure 3 shows the CFD predicted temperature
distribution for the fluid domain inside the helical coils resulting from the received flux shown in
Figure 2. It can be seen that the conical cavity produces the highest fluid outlet temperature of 816K.
This is due to the lower thermal losses compared to the other geometries as shown in figure 4.
تاريخ النشر
01/08/2016
رقم المجلد
رقم العدد
الكلمات المفتاحية
Concentrated solar plant Parabolic dish Cavity receiver Ray-tracing Optical efficiency