Experimental Test Setup of an Airwall to Reduce the Convective Heat Loss in Solar Thermal Cavity Receivers

Abstract

An experimental setup is presented which allows to experimentally determine the thermal heat losses from a heated solar cavity receiver with an airwall. The setup is a ‘near-full-scale’ replica of a receiver, which ensures that the characteristic fluid dynamic numbers are in a range relevant for practical industrial applications. The executed tests show that – at ideal configuration – the airwall can reduce the overall thermal losses by 7±2%. The reduction of the convective losses amounts to 32±11%, which is in line with the known predictions from CFD simulations.

Keywords

• Central Receiver
• Heat Loss
• Air Curtain
• Airwall
• Convection