Two Dimension Numerical Modeling of Receiver Tube Performance for Concentrated Solar Power Plant

In solar concentrators plants the vacuum receiver tube is considered the heart of the solar concentrator plant. The EES program was used to study both the effect of the annular pressure between the receiver tube and the envelope glass cover on the tube performance in terms of amount of collected energy, energy losses, temperature rise of the heat transfer fluid and the thermal efficiency of the receiver tube. The radiation and convection heat transfer between the outer surface of the receiver tube and the inner surface of the glass cover were taken into considerations. The temperature distribution, energy collected and energy losses of the receiver tube are obtained using the EES program for different meteorological and operating parameters. The results show that the convection heat transfer between the steel tube and the glass cover increases sharply to significant values at annular pressure above 110 Pa.