Optimized secondary concentrators for a partitioned central receiver system

✍ Scribed by A. Timinger; W. Spirkl; A. Kribus; H. Ries

• Book ID: 104167393
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 723 KB
• Volume: 69
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0038-092X
• DOI: 10.1016/s0038-092x(00)00047-5

✦ Synopsis

We present secondary concentrators with non-regular shapes for increasing the concentration of radiation from a given field of heliostats, well suited for partitioning the receiver into several units, arranged side by side. For a general heliostat field with a non-axisymmetric directional distribution of the radiation at the entrance aperture of the secondary concentrator, concentrators with non-regular shape can significantly increase the concentration as compared to their symmetric analogs. Our optimizations indicate best results for concentrators based on rectangular entrance and exit apertures. The concentration may be increased by a factor of 2.3 at an optical efficiency of 90%. If the shape of the exit aperture is required to be close to circular, concentrators based on non-regular hexagonal apertures may reach concentration higher than their symmetric analogs by a factor of 1.3. For the given radiation, concentrators with polygonal apertures perform significantly better than concentrators with smooth elliptic apertures.