Numerical study on the influence of vortex flow and recirculating flow into a solid particle solar receiver

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a numerical study of a well-established vortex flow receiver and a proposed recirculating flow Solid particle solar receiver (SPSR) capable of achieving high air temperature which is perfectly suitable for the hybrid solar thermal power plant. Solar particle receivers are modeled using discrete particle model (DPM), RNG k- e flow model and discrete ordinate (DO) radiation model. Numerical analysis is done by considering two cases (i) Recirculating flow solar receiver with non-reacting particle and without non-reacting particle as a medium of transferring heat (ii) Vortex flow solar receiver with non-reacting particle and without non-reacting particle as a medium of transferring heat. The examination is carried out to compare the parametric sensitivity of both solar particle receivers with particle and air and without particle as a medium of transferring heat by considering the solar flux that incident on the aperture of the receiver and varying the air flow rate and particle concentration, recirculation rate. The results depict that use of particle enhance the heat transfer for both cases. It is concluded from the thermal behavior of recirculating flow SPSR that about 30% higher cavity thermal efficiency and exhibit higher and uniform heat transfer than a vortex flow SPSR.