Thermal performance analysis of porous media receiver with concentrated solar irradiation

The distribution of concentrated solar irradiation has a significantly impact on the temperature distribution of porous media receiver. The thermal performance of porous media receiver is investigated by combining the Monte Carlo Ray Tracing (MCRT) method and FLUENT software with user defined functions (UDFs). The MCRT method is used to obtain the heat flux distribution on the fluid inlet surface of porous media receiver. The calculated heat flux distribution is treated as the wall heat flux boundary condition of thermal performance analysis. The local non-equilibrium thermal equation (LNTE) model with Rosseland approximation is used to investigate the temperature distributions. Typical influences of the heat flux boundary condition, radiation heat loss, porosity, emissivity, flow mass and average particle diameter on the temperature distributions are investigated.