Numerical simulation of a high temperature solar thermal receiver

The solar high temperature receiver is a key component of solar energy application for a high temperature thermal or a thermochemical process, which absorbs concentrated sunlight and transfers its energy to a working medium (gas, liquid or solid particles). In various attractive high-performance solar receivers, the Directly Irradiated Annular Pressurized Receiver (DIAPR) is a volumetric (directly irradiated), windowed cavity receiver which has some advantageous characteristics, such as supplying hot gas at a pressure of 10-30 bar and exit temperature of up to 1300°C and the aperture flux of up to 10 MW/m². This paper simulated numerically using the Fluent software the hydrogen flow field, temperature field and transfer efficiency of solar energy to the modified DIAPR, whose absorber was made of a layer high-temperature ceramic bubbles. The results show that the exit temperature of gas is up to 1500K and the solar energy transfer efficiency is up to 0.86.