Efficiency and heat loss analysis of honeycomb receiver varying air mass flow rate and beam width

• Published in: International journal of heat and mass transfer Vol. 137; pp. 1027 - 1040
• Main Authors: Nakakura, Mitsuho, Matsubara, Koji, Bellan, Selvan, Kodama, Tatsuya
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-07-2019; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Computer simulation; Conjugate radiation-convection-conduction simulation; Efficiency; Flow control; Heat loss; Honeycomb receiver; Mass flow rate; Maximization; Optimization; Receiver efficiency; Receivers; Temperature distribution; Honeycomb receiver; Heat loss; Receiver efficiency; Conjugate radiation-convection-conduction simulation
• ISSN: 0017-9310; 1879-2189
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2019.03.153

•Efficiency and loss analysis was made for simple and cut-back volumetric receivers.•Air mass flow rate was varied keeping radiation power over air mass flow rate (POM).•There were optimized air mass flow rates maximizing efficiency with fixed POM.•Minimization of re-radiation losses caused maximization of receiver efficiency.•Attenuation of reflection losses increased efficiency of cut-back receiver.
This study analyzed efficiency and heat loss of three types of simple and cut-back receivers. The conjugate simulation was made for situation where the honeycomb receiver receives concentrated radiation heating air stream through square cells. The DO (Discrete Ordinate) approach was adopted to calculate the radiation intensity and to fully couple the flow and three styles of heat transfer. This paper confirmed no significant effects for temperature distribution of the simple channel due to number of grids and angular discretization of DO model. The model is validated by comparing the receiver efficiency between experiments and simulations. After the validation, the simple and two unique geometric (cut-back 1 and 2) channels are investigated changing the air mass flow rate and beam width. There are no great effects from the beam width on the receiver efficiency for three types of different receivers. Whereas, the receiver efficiency was vastly dependent on the air mass flow rate. There are certain value of air mass flow rate maximizing the receiver efficiency. Reducing the air mass flow rate below this criterion resulted in clearly deteriorating the efficiency. The analysis indicated that the re-radiation loss was minimized at a certain level of air mass flow rate maximizing the efficiency for three cases of receivers.