Coupled modeling of a directly heated tubular solar receiver for supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle: Optical and thermal-fluid evaluation

Ortega, Jesus and Khivsara, Sagar and Christian, Joshua and Ho, Clifford and Yellowhair, Julius and Dutta, Pradip (2016) Coupled modeling of a directly heated tubular solar receiver for supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle: Optical and thermal-fluid evaluation. In: APPLIED THERMAL ENGINEERING, 109 (B). pp. 970-978.

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Abstract

Single phase performance and appealing thermo-physical properties make supercritical carbon dioxide (s-CO2) a good heat transfer fluid candidate for concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies. The development of a solar receiver capable of delivering s-CO2 at outlet temperatures similar to 973 K is required in order to merge CSP and s-CO2 Brayton cycle technologies. A coupled optical and thermal-fluid modeling effort for a tubular receiver is undertaken to evaluate the direct tubular s-CO2 receiver's thermal performance when exposed to a concentrated solar power input of similar to 0.3-0.5 MW. Ray tracing, using SolTrace, is performed to determine the heat flux profiles on the receiver and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) determines the thermal performance of the receiver under the specified heating conditions. An in-house MATLAB code is developed to couple SolTrace and ANSYS Fluent. CFD modeling is performed using ANSYS Fluent to predict the thermal performance of the receiver by evaluating radiation and convection heat loss mechanisms. Understanding the effects of variation in heliostat aiming strategy and flow configurations on the thermal performance of the receiver was achieved through parametric analyses. A receiver thermal efficiency similar to 85% was predicted and the surface temperatures were observed to be within the allowable limit for the materials under consideration. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	APPLIED THERMAL ENGINEERING
Publisher:	10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.05.178
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs toPERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, THE BOULEVARD, LANGFORD LANE, KIDLINGTON, OXFORD OX5 1GB, ENGLAND
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Mechanical Engineering
Date Deposited:	04 Jan 2017 05:36
Last Modified:	04 Jan 2017 05:36
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/55880

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