Analysis and design of two stretched-membrane parabolic dish concentrators

Journal Article · Thu Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 1991 · Journal of Solar Energy Engineering; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1115/1.2930490· OSTI ID:5766875

Mancini, T R ^[1]

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1. Div. 6216, Sandia National Lab., Albuquerque, NM (US)

The state-of-the-art of parabolic dish solar concentrators is the faceted, glass-metal dish. The mass production costs of glass-metal dishes may be high because they do not incorporate the innovations of design and materials developed over the last eight years. Therefore, Sandia National Laboratories has undertaken to develop two stretched-membrane parabolic dish concentrators for the Department of Energy's Solar Thermal Program. These solar concentrators are being designed for integration with an advanced solar receiver and a Stirling engine/generator in a 25-kW{sub e} power production unit. In this paper, the designs of the two stretched-membrane dishes are analyzed using the computer code CIRCE to model the optical performance of the concentrators and a thermal model, which includes conduction, convection, and radiation heat transfer, to calculate the thermal losses from the cavity solar receivers. The solar collector efficiency, defined as the product of the optical efficiency of the collector and the thermal efficiency of the receiver, is optimized for comparing the performance of several solar concentrator configurations. Ten facet arrangements fo the faceted stretched-membrane dish and the single-element stretched-membrane dish are modeled and their performances compared with that of a state-of-the-art glass-metal dish. Last, the initial designs of these two stretched-membrane dishes are described along with the results of preliminary performance measurements on their respective optical elements.

• DOE Contract Number: AC04-76DP00789
• OSTI ID: 5766875
• Journal Information: Journal of Solar Energy Engineering; (United States), Vol. 113:3; ISSN 0199-6231
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
SOLAR CONCENTRATORS
DESIGN
THERMAL ANALYSIS
C CODES
CONVECTION
EFFICIENCY
HEAT LOSSES
HEAT TRANSFER
PERFORMANCE
SANDIA LABORATORIES
SPECIFICATIONS
THERMAL CONDUCTION
COMPUTER CODES
ENERGY LOSSES
ENERGY TRANSFER
EQUIPMENT
LOSSES
MASS TRANSFER
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
SOLAR EQUIPMENT
US AEC
US DOE
US ERDA
US ORGANIZATIONS
141000* - Solar Collectors & Concentrators