Experimental analysis of the pressure drop and heat transfer through metal foams used as volumetric receivers under concentrated solar radiation

The main objective of this work was to evaluate the behavior of porous materials, when treated as volumetric receivers under concentrated solar radiation. For this reason various porous metallic and ceramic materials have been tested as potential receivers for concentrated solar radiation. The experimental investigation showed that their efficiency was depending on both materials parameters and flow conditions. In this work, a variety of foam materials such as Ni and Ni alloy, inconel, copper, aluminum and SiC with different open cell porosity were tested as potential media to be used as volumetric receivers and heat exchangers. However, since the results were similar, for space economy, only the results of two of them, nickel and inconel were presented in detail and compared with each other.