Date:

2025-04-30

Title of Paper:

Experimental and Numerical Study on the Thermal Performance of a Water/Steam Cavity Receiver

Journal:

Energies

Summary:

An  experimental  platform  was  designed  and  built  for  testing the  thermal performance  of  a  water/steam cavity receiver.  The  experimental platform  was  utilized  to investigate  the  start-up performance  and  operation  characteristics  of  the  receiver.  The electrical heating mode was chosen to simulate the non-uniform distribution of heat flux on the surface of absorber tubes inside the cavity. During start-up the temperature rise rate and the mass flow rate  are  considered  as control variables.  A  couple  of  start-up  curves under different  working  pressures  were  finally obtained. The  results  showed  that  the receiver performed  at relatively low  thermal  efficiencies.  The  main  reason for  the low  thermal efficiency was attributed to the low steam mass flow rate, which causes a high proportional heat loss. In order to study the relationship between thermal efficiency and mass flow rate, a computational model  for  evaluating  the  thermal  performance  of  a  cavity  receiver  was built  and  verified. This  model couples three  aspects  of  heat transfer: the  radiative  heat transfer inside the receiver, the flow boiling heat transfer inside the absorber tubes and the convection  heat  transfer  around the  receiver. The water/steam  cavity receiver  of  the experimental platform  was  studied numerically.  The  curve  of  thermal  efficiency versus mass flow rate was obtained to show that the thermal efficiency increases with increasing mass  flow  rate within  a  certain  range,  and  the increase is more remarkable at  low mass flow  rates.  The  purpose  of the present study was to determine an appropriate mass  flow rate for the receiver of the experimental platform to ensure its efficient operation.

Co-author:

N.Tu, J.J.Wei*, J. B. Fang

Volume:

6

Page Number:

1198-1216

Translation or Not:

No

Date of Publication:

2013-02-25