Optical and thermal performance of a novel solar particle receiver

Abstract

A novel particle receiver is proposed and tried to improve the flexibility of control, the reliability and the efficiency of the existing solar particle receivers. The novel particle receiver is mainly composed of an inclined plate where the particles flow due to gravity and absorb concentrating radiation directly meanwhile, and a pneumatic control system where the particle flow rate can be regulated by fluidization gas. The performance has been experimentally and numerically investigated preliminarily. The experimental results of cold tests show that the solid-gas ratio can reach up to ∼25 for different cross sections, indicating that the heat loss caused by fluidization gas is acceptable, usually less than 2%, and particle flow rate could be adjusted flexibly. The experimental results of hot test show that the outlet temperature of particle flow ranges from ∼709K to ∼938K and the average outlet temperature of particle flow is ∼807K under the incident radiation power of ∼8 kw and the particle flow rate of ∼7.5g/s, so the efficiency of the receiver is ∼61%. The Monte Carlo method is applied to analyze radiative heat transfer property in this particle receiver, which shows that the average outlet temperature could reach ∼1205K with an efficiency of ∼70.9% when the particle flow rate is reduced to ∼5g/s. These results indicate the novel solar receiver is a potential option for high-temperature CSP technologies.