Volume 24: Sustainable Energy Solutions for a Post-COVID Recovery towards a Better Future: Part VII

An Optical-Thermal Coupled Model for Performance Analysis of a Molten-Salt Solar Power Tower Yu Qiu, Yuanting Zhang, Ya-Ling He, Jikang Wang, Xiao-Yue Li, Qing Li

Abstract

An optical-thermal coupled model was developed to study the performance of a typical molten-salt solar power tower, which was proven to be reliable by comparing with testing data. It is found that the mean absolute deviations between simulation and testing data are about 0.8% for the receiver efficiency under full-power condition. The model reveals that the detailed distributions of the solar flux and temperature in the receiver are extremely non-uniform, which resulted in high thermal stress at the tube crown. Moreover, failure analysis of the receiver indicates that the high strain introduced by high flux can result in fatigue failure, but it can be avoided by reasonable aiming strategy. The validated model and results from this work can offer helps for appropriate performance predictions in solar power tower.

Keywords Optical-thermal coupled model, Molten-salt receiver, Heat loss, Efficiency, Failure analysis