The outcomes of this research project will result in an improved understanding of the performance of solar thermal receivers, helping to remove barriers to the deployment of large scale concentrating solar power plants by reducing the risks associated with new plant designs.

Experimental and computational modelling work will be conducted to improve the understanding, prediction and management of convection and radiation heat loss in high-temperature solar thermal receivers. General results applicable to a wide range of systems will be published, but also the study will aim to develop a significantly improved receiver intended for use on a dish concentrator. This new receiver will be built and tested on-sun with the aid and involvement of CSIRO and Sandia National Laboratories.

Experimental work is intended to include both electrically-heated air cavity models as well as a novel application of saltywater- based models to investigate the convective heat-loss flows. Computational work with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software will be validated by experiment, and then used to generalise the results for a broader range of geometries.

The resulting receiver will be available for commercial adoption, and it is hoped that the resulting expertise will also be of use to the solar thermal industry in Australia and internationally, facilitating reduced cost of solar thermal electricity.

Fact Sheet: Improved high temperature receivers for dish concentrators (PDF 337KB)