A Step Toward Realizing Open Volumetric Air Receiver Based Systems in Desert Regions

An open volumetric air receiver allows achieving a high temperature air for an innovative solar convective furnace system. Operating this receiver in arid-desert regions will pose a major challenge on account of the dust deposition in its porous absorbers. The resulting higher thermal resistance compared to a clean pore, even with a partial blockage, will lead to their failure. Therefore, a cleaning strategy based on the cyclone separator is already proposed for the receiver. Such an additional sub-system will reduce the performance of this air receiver due to the parasitic loss or pressure-drop. Considering these aspects, the paper presents (a) a correlation for the pressure-drop across a cylindrical absorber based on experiment and numerical simulation, (b) a limitation of a derived correlation for the thermal efficiency of an open volumetric air receiver based on experiment, and (c) an approach to determine the operating conditions of the receiver including a cyclone separator. The findings are expected to be useful for enabling concentrated solar thermal systems in arid deserts based on such receivers.