TERMINAL CONCENTRATORS FOR SOLAR CENTRAL RECEIVER APPLICATIONS.

A central solar receiver system is a high-temperature solar thermal system with many heliostat mirrors reflecting light energy onto a single receiver. Terminal concentrators are secondary reflectors that are mounted on the receivers to increase the concentration of light from the primary concentrators. The resulting reduction of the aperture of the receiver will also reduce the thermal losses. This study investigated the extent to which terminal concentrators could affect both the optical and thermal performance of a solar central receiver. The results demonstrate that adding a flat-plate terminal concentrator with a reflectance of 0. 9 to a system optimized without a terminal concentrator could reduce the combined optical and thermal losses by about 15% and improve the overall performance by about 2%.