Development of an Evacuated Receiver for Line-Focus Solar Thermal Collectors

摘要

Acurex Corporation has recently completed the design review, fabrication assembly, and testing of an evacuated receiver for its 3021 parabolic trough solar collector. The receivers were installed at Sandia National Laboratories' Distributed Receiver Test Facility for testing by Sandia. The evacuated receivers are believed to represent a significant improvement in the state of the art of receiver technology and feature simplicity, low cost, and high collection efficiency. The background of the design is discussed detailing the criteria applied to arrive at the design. Tooling used to produce the prototype receivers is discussed as well as fabrication methods and problems encountered. Future improvements are detailed. Initial bench tests have verified the performance improvements expected over nonevacuated receivers. (ERA citation 12:013410)