| 1. |
- Wang, Wujun
(författare)
-
Development of an Impinging Receiver for Solar Dish-Brayton Systems
- 2015
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A new receiver concept utilizing impinging jet cooling technology has been developed for a small scale solar dish-Brayton system. In a typical impinging receiver design, the jet nozzles are distributed evenly around the cylindrical absorber wall above the solar peak flux region for managing the temperature at an acceptable level. The absorbed solar irradiation is partially lost to the ambient by radiation and natural convection heat transfer, the major part is conducted through the wall and taken away by the impingement jets to drive a gas turbine. Since the thermal power requirement of a 5 kWe Compower® micro gas turbine (MGT) perfectly matches with the power collected by the EuroDish when the design Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) input is 800 W/m2, the boundary conditions for the impinging receiver design in this work are based on the combination of the Compower®MGT and the EuroDish system.In order to quickly find feasible receiver geometries and impinging jet nozzle arrangements for achieving acceptable temperature level and temperature distributions on the absorber cavity wall, a novel inverse design method (IDM) has been developed based on a combination of a ray-tracing model and a heat transfer analytical model. In this design method, a heat transfer model of the absorber wall is used for analyzing the main heat transfer process between the cavity wall outer surface, the inner surface and the working fluid. A ray-tracing model is utilized for obtaining the solar radiative boundary conditions for the heat transfer model. Furthermore, the minimum stagnation heat transfer coefficient, the jet pitch and the maximum pressure drop governing equations are used for narrowing down the possible nozzle arrangements. Finally, the curves for the required total heat transfer coefficient distribution are obtained and compared with different selected impinging arrangements on the working fluid side, and candidate design configurations are obtained.Furthermore, a numerical conjugate heat transfer model combined with a ray-tracing model was developed validating the inverse design method and for studying the thermal performance of an impinging receiver in detail. With the help of the modified inverse design method and the numerical conjugate heat transfer model, two impinging receivers based on sintered α-SiC (SSiC) and stainless steel 253 MA material have been successfully designed. The detailed analyses show that for the 253 MA impinging receiver, the average air temperature at the outlet and the thermal efficiency can reach 1071.5 K and 82.7% at a DNI level of 800 W/m2 matching the system requirements well. Furthermore, the local temperature differences on the absorber can be reduced to 130 K and 149 K for two different DNI levels, which is a significant reduction and improvement compared with earlier published cavity receiver designs. The inverse design method has also been verified to be an efficient way in reducing the calculation costs during the design procedure.For the validation and demonstration of the receiver designs, a unique experimental facility was designed and constructed. The facility is a novel high flux solar simulator utilizing for the first time Fresnel lenses to concentrate the light of 12 commercial high power Xenon-arc lamps. Finally, a prototype of a 253 MA based impinging was experimentally studied with the help of the 84 kWe Fresnel lens based high flux solar simulator in KTH.
|
|
| 2. |
- Garrido Gálvez, Jorge, 1990-
(författare)
-
Solar cavity receiver design for a dish-Stirling system
- 2020
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The growing concern for the climate change has led to an increasing research effort in renewable energy technologies in order to achieve a more sustainable electricity production. Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is identified as a promising technology to deal with part of the future electricity production. In CSP technologies, a solar receiver converts the concentrated sunlight into high temperature heat. The solar receiver is one of the most critical CSP components as it must provide high thermal power collection efficiencies while operating under very high temperatures and heat fluxes. Thereby, improving the solar receiver efficiency and endurance would benefit the technical and economic viability of CSP.This PhD thesis aims at improving the efficiency and endurance of a typical solar cavity receiver for the dish-Stirling CSP technology. This research work includes new experimental and numerical analyses contributing to the state of the art of solar receiver design. The efficiency is improved through the analysis of the receiver cavity shape, geometry, operating conditions, and radiative properties, whereas the durability improvement is achieved through the study of advantageous receiver support structures using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Moreover, a solar laboratory was developed and characterized to conduct representative experiments of the cavity receiver. Multiple parametric experiments were conducted in order to perform a comprehensive validation of the simulations.During the development of the solar laboratory, it was observed that the commonly utilized flux mapping system (CMOS camera-Lambertian target) should not be used for the characterization of Fresnel lens-based solar simulators. Due to this, the lab characterization was approached combining measurements from a thermopile sensor (radiometer) and a self-designed flat plate calorimeter. Furthermore, a detailed Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis allowed an accurate evaluation of the uncertainty propagation. All the experiments were designed and conducted to increase the accuracy of the final results.Regarding the cavity receiver design for a dish-Stirling system, the aperture diameter is the most important parameter towards improving the cavity receiver efficiency. The reverse-conical cavity shape provided higher efficiencies (up to 2%) than the cylindrical shape. Additionally, a potential efficiency increase of 0.6% could be achieved by using a cavity material/coating with optimal radiative properties(high emissivity/absorptivity ratio). Finally, the studies suggested that convection has a negligible influence on determining the optimum aperture diameter, whereas the Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) has little influence. The simulations yielded a cavity receiver with a maximum total receiver efficiency of 91.5%.Experimental measurements of the receiver displacements under thermal expansion allowed finding realistic mechanical boundary conditions of the receiver. Further structural simulations suggested that thermomechanical stresses can be reduced by setting the receiver supports to certain positions, which can be achieved with the application of external forces and torques. Moreover, the peak stresses can be moved to colder regions to improve the lifetime of the receiver. By shifting the support positions, the receiver simulations calculating creep lifetime under no relaxation showed a potential lifetime improvement of 57%.
|
|
