An experimental investigation of the heat transfer performance in a hybrid solar receiver combustor operating with the solar-only and combustion-only modes

摘要

This paper reports an experimental investigation of the heat transfer characteristics in a laboratory-scale hybrid solar receiver combustor (HSRC) when operated under either combustion or solar-only mode. It aims to investigate the performance of the HSRC under these two modes of operation. A conventional swirl-stabilised natural gas flame and a 5-kW_(el) xenon-arc solar lamp simulator were used as energy source for the combustion and solar modes, respectively. The influence of the mode of operation and heat transfer fluid (HTF) flow rate on the thermal efficiency, heat losses, heat flux distribution within the cavity were investigated. Despite the different contributions from the two dominant modes of heat transfer, namely radiation and heat convection, under the different regimes of operation, it was found that the device can achieve similar thermal efficiency in both modes (considering heat recovery from the exhausts). Also, the heat flux distributions on the HTF coils were found to be significantly different under the two modes of operation.