scientists at the australian national university recently announced that they have set a world record for converting 97 percent of sunlight into steam through a new receiver for a solar concentrator dish. this is seven percent better than current commercial systems, according to a report from business insider.
(wikimedia commons)
the scientists presented the new design at the solarpaces conference. the abstract for the full report is as follows:
“an integrated model for an axisymmetric helical-coil tubular cavity receiver is presented, incorporating optical ray-tracing for incident solar flux, radiosity analysis for thermal emissions, computational fluid dynamics for external convection, and a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model for internal flow-boiling of water.
a receiver efficiency of 98.7% is calculated, for an inlet/outlet temperature range of 60–500 °c, which is the ratio of fluid heating to receiver incident irradiance. the high-efficiency design makes effective use of non-uniform flux in its non-isothermal layout, matching lower temperature regions to areas of lower flux. full-scale testing of the design will occur in late 2015.”
to learn more about the new receiver, visit http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/proceeding/aipcp/10.1063/1.4949081.
watch the scientists talk about the new record in the video below:
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