Numerical models of advanced ceramic absorbers for volumetric solar receivers

This inconsistency can be addressed both to inherent difficulties in the experiments butalso on the lack of a proper characterization of the absorber radiative behavior that directly affects the heat transfer process. This gap is even more pronounced when the use of a continuum approach is considered, due to implicit approximation introduced by the homogeneous representation of the porous volume. For those reasons, a better representation of the radiative heat transfer must be introduced in future conjugate numerical models and the use of a continuum approach can be addressed to a preliminary design procedure, given the possibility to quickly manipulate geometric and thermodynamic parameters of porous structures.