| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 648016 | Applied Thermal Engineering | 2011 | 10 Pages |
Uniform heater temperature and high optical–thermal efficiency are crucial for the reliable and economical operation of a Solar Dish/Stirling engine facility. The Monte-Carlo ray-tracing method is utilized to predict the radiation flux distributions of the concentrator–receiver system. The ray-tracing method is first validated by experiment, then the radiation flux profiles on the solar receiver surface for faceted real concentrator and ideal paraboloidal concentrator, irradiated by Xe-arc lamps and real sun, for different aperture positions and receiver shapes are analyzed, respectively. The resulted radiation flux profiles are subsequently transferred to a CFD code as boundary conditions to numerically simulate the fluid flow and conjugate heat transfer in the receiver cavity by coupling the radiation, natural convection and heat conduction together, and the CFD method is also validated through experiment. The results indicate that a faceted concentrator in combination with a solar simulator composed of 12 Xe-arc lamps is advantageous to drive the solar Stirling engine for all-weather indoor tests. Based on the simulation results, a solar receiver-Stirling heater configuration is designed to achieve a considerably uniform temperature distribution on the heater head tubes while maintaining a high efficiency of 60.7%.
► Radiation flux in Dish/Stirling system is analyzed by validated ray-tracing method. ► Temperature field on the solar receiver is analyzed by a validated CFD method. ► Effects of Xe-arc lamp solar simulator and faceted real concentrator are analyzed. ► Effects of different receiver positions and receiver shapes are investigated. ► A Stirling heater configuration is presented with uniform temperature field.
