A large deployable solar concentrator with receiver and heat storage, phase 2

摘要

We developed design and fabrication concepts that seem quite attractive for fabricating and assembling full-scale concentrators. Developing suitable optical testing techniques was a significant part of our effort. Our work on receiver design and component testing shows that beryllium is fairly sensitive to 'thermal ratcheting.' This results from small external loads combined with large internal stresses caused by anisotropic thermal expansion within each grain. This problem plus the potentially better performance and lower cost of a higher-temperature system using graphite as the storage medium led us to generalize our receiver design concept to be relevant for either beryllium or graphite.