Development of a High-Flux Solar Simulator for Experimental Testing of High-Temperature Applications

Marco Milanese, Gianpiero Colangelo and Arturo de Risi
Additional contact information
Marco Milanese: Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Gianpiero Colangelo: Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Arturo de Risi: Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 11, 1-18

Abstract: In the last few years, several studies have been carried out on concentrating solar thermal and thermochemical applications. These studies can be further enhanced by means of high-flux solar simulators (HFSS), since they allow the development of experimental tests under controlled irradiance conditions, regardless of sunshine. In this work, a new high-flux solar simulator, capable of reaching levels of irradiance higher than 100 W/cm 2 (1000 suns), has been designed, built and characterized. This simulator is composed of 8 ellipsoidal specular reflectors, arranged face-down on a horizontal plane, in order to irradiate from the upper side any system requiring the simulation of concentrated solar radiation; differently from the HFSSs described in the scientific literature, this configuration allows the avoidance of any distortion of fluid-dynamic or convective phenomena within the system under investigation. As a first step, a numerical analysis of the HFSS has been carried out, simulating each real light source (Xe-arc), having a length of 6.5 mm, as a line of 5 sub-sources. Therefore, the HFSS has been built and characterized, measuring a maximum irradiance of 120 W/cm 2 and a maximum temperature of 1007 °C; these values will be enough to develop experimental tests on lab-scale thermal and thermochemical solar applications.

Keywords: high-flux solar simulator; concentrated solar energy; optical characterization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/11/3124/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/11/3124/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:11:p:3124-:d:563268

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().