Solar Dish Receiver Designer
Application ID: 42581
Solar concentrator/cavity receiver systems can be used to focus incident solar radiation into a small region, generating intense heat which can then be converted to electrical or chemical energy. A common figure of merit in solar thermal power systems is the concentration ratio, or the ratio of the solar flux on the surface of the receiver or in the focal plane to the ambient solar flux.
This app is a runnable application based on the Solar Dish Receiver tutorial model. In this app, incident solar radiation is reflected by a parabolic dish, while the concentrated solar radiation is collected in a small cavity. A total of six different parameterized cavity geometries are available for investigation: Cylindrical, Dome, Heteroconical, Elliptical, Spherical, and Conical. It is also possible to take several different types of perturbation into account, including solar limb darkening and surface roughness. For each cavity geometry, built-in plots show the flux distribution and concentration ratio in the focal plane as well as the incident flux on the interior surfaces of the cavity.
You can learn more about this example in a related blog post: "Efficiently Optimizing Solar Dish Receiver Designs"
This application example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products:
however, additional products may be required to completely define and model it. Furthermore, this example may also be defined and modeled using components from the following product combinations:
The combination of COMSOL® products required to model your application depends on several factors and may include boundary conditions, material properties, physics interfaces, and part libraries. Particular functionality may be common to several products. To determine the right combination of products for your modeling needs, review the Specification Chart and make use of a free evaluation license. The COMSOL Sales and Support teams are available for answering any questions you may have regarding this.