Development of a solar cavity receiver with a short-term storage system

The technological progress carried out in the development of high-temperature materials has led to the design of new concentrated solar power plants, like Dish-Micro Gas Turbines (Dish-MGTs). This study proposes a novel cavity receiver for small-scale Dish-MGT plants with a phase-change material storage system integrated inside the receiver container. Such a storage system provides a proper thermal inertia to the component, to level the effects of short-term solar radiation fluctuations which can reduce plant performance and, in the worst cases, damage seriously the MGT. In the paper, results related to CFD steady-state and transient (charge and discharge storage phases) analyses are presented and discussed.