Convective Heat Loss Analysis of a Cavity Receiver for a Solar Concentrator

Abstract

The convective heat loss of a modified cavity receiver for a low-cost concentrating solar power plant is studied. Convection is modelled by using the fundamental mass, momentum and energy conservation principles together with the k-w SST for turbulence modelling. It is also compared to a flat receiver design. The temperature at the cavity walls is fixed to a non-uniform distribution computed from the solar irradiation field at the walls obtained from a previous work. The convective heat loss rate is computed at different conditions of inclination angle and wind speed of the receivers. As it was expected the cavity improves to the flat receiver; however it is shown that the cavity losses are still considerable mainly due to the wind entering the cavity.