One-Dimensional Thermal Modeling of Falling-Particle Solar Receivers

Abstract

he change to temperature concentrated solar power needs good receiver designs. This work shows a model of a free falling particle receiver. The model is made up of 40 parts and it looks at how heat moves through radiation, convection and the movement of falling particles. When we compare this model to data we see that it is very accurate with a small error of only 1.18% for the temperature of the particles. We also did a study to see what factors are most important. We found that how well the particles absorb heat is the most important thing, followed by the amount of heat and the rate at which the particles move. Our analysis shows that we can get high thermal efficiencies, up to 84.5% when we use a lot of heat. We found some things, like how wind outside can change when the system starts to work from 0.5 to 0.8 megawatts per square meter. We also found that when the particles are around 500 micrometers in size they start to behave.The study also shows that there is a balance to be found where the best performance comes from using particles rather than making them too hot. Finally we made some maps that show how efficient the system can be when we use amounts of particles and this can help us design better systems using computers and optimization techniques with a fixed temperature of 1073.15 Kelvin. Concentrated solar power systems, like these can be very useful and high temperature concentrated solar power systems need designs so we need to keep working on concentrated solar power and high temperature concentrated solar power systems