EFFECT OF HIGH RECEIVER THERMAL LOSS PER UNIT AREA ON THE PERFORMANCE OF SOLAR CENTRAL RECEIVER SYSTEMS HAVING OPTIMUM HELIOSTAT FIELDS AND OPTIMUM RECEIVER APERTURE AREAS

Recent efforts in solar central receiver research have been directed toward high temperature applications. Associated with high temperature processes are greater receiver thermal losses due to reradiation and convection. This dissertation examines the performance of central receiver systems having optimum heliostate fields and receiver aperture areas as a function of receiver thermal loss per unit area of receiver aperture. The results address the problem of application optimization (loss varies) as opposed to the problem of optimization of a design for a specific application (loss fixed).; A reasonable range of values for the primary independent variable L (the average reradiative and convective loss per unit area of receiver aperture) and a reasonable set of design assumptions were first established. The optimum receiver aperture area, number and spacings of heliostats, and field boundary were then determined for two tower focal heights and for each value of L. From this, the solar subsystem performance for each optimized system was calculated.; Heliostat field analysis and optimization required a detailed computational analysis. A significant modification to the standard method of solving the optimization equations, effectively a decoupling of the solution process into collector and receiver subsystem parts, greatly aided the analysis.; Results are presented for tower focal heights of 150 and 180 m. Values of L ranging from 0.04 to 0.50 MW m('-2) were considered, roughly corresponding to working fluid temperatures (at receiver exit) in the range of 650 to 1650 C. As L increases over this range, the receiver thermal efficiency and the receiver interception factor decrease. The optimal power level drops by almost half, and the cost per unit of energy produced increases by about 25% for the base case set of design assumptions. The resulting decrease in solar subsystem efficiency (relative to the defined annual input energy) from 0.57 to 0.35 is about 40% and is a significant effect. Unoptimized systems would experience an even greater degradation in performance.; Further study of this problem would indicate the effects which other tower focal heights, receiver orientation, heliostat size, beam degrading, and better focusing heliostats have on the results.