com
Received 28 March 2010; received in revised form 24 June 2010; accepted 8 July 2010
Available online 21 August 2010
Abstract
In the parabolic trough concentrator with tube receiver system, the heat transfer fluid flowing through the tube receiver can induce
high thermal stress and deflection. In this study, the eccentric tube receiver is introduced with the aim to reduce the thermal stresses of
tube receiver. The ray–thermal–structural sequential coupled numerical analyses are adopted to obtain the concentrated heat flux distri-
butions, temperature distributions and thermal stress fields of both the eccentric and concentric tube receivers. During the sequential
coupled numerical analyses, the concentrated heat flux distribution on the bottom half periphery of tube receiver is obtained by
Monte-Carlo ray tracing method, and the fitting function method is introduced for the calculated heat flux distribution transformation
from the Monte-Carlo ray tracing model to the CFD analysis model. The temperature distributions and thermal stress fields are obtained
by the CFD and FEA analyses, respectively. The effects of eccentricity and oriented angle variation on the thermal stresses of eccentric
tube receiver are also investigated. It is recommended to adopt the eccentric tube receiver with optimum eccentricity and 90° oriented
angle as tube receiver for the parabolic trough concentrator system to reduce the thermal stresses.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Eccentric tube receiver; Thermal stress; Fitting function method; Concentrated solar radiation; Ray tracing
0038-092X/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.solener.2010.07.005
1810 F. Wang et al. / Solar Energy 84 (2010) 1809–1815
receivers are designed using ray tracing methods to 2.2. Construction of eccentric tube receiver
obtain the isosurface of solar radiation (David et al.,
2008; Shuai et al., 2008a,b). At present, the literature To meet the above requirements of the new type recei-
survey indicates that the research on receivers with ver, the eccentric tube receiver for parabolic trough concen-
homogenous solar radiation heat flux distribution trator system is introduced.
remains at the theory stage, and a large amount of man- Fig. 1 shows the diagram of the eccentric tube receiver.
ufacturing problems wait to solve further. The eccentric tube receiver is proposed on the basis of con-
Compound wall copper–steel receiver. The compound centric tube receiver. As seen from this figure, the center of
wall receiver is composed of two parts: the internal tube internal cylinder surface of concentric tube receiver is
stratified is made of copper to obtain an excellent heat moved upward (or other directions), which is not located
transfer performance to reduce the temperature gradi- at the same coordinate position with the center of external
ents, and the external tube stratified is made of steel to cylinder surface. Therefore, the wall thickness of the bot-
strengthen the intensity of the tube receiver. The com- tom half section of tube receiver will increase without add-
pound wall copper–steel tube receivers have been ing any mass to the entire tube receiver. With the same
applied to the Solar Power Plant of the National Uni- boundary conditions for numerical analyses, the increase
versity of Mexico (Flores and Almanza, 2004). Though of wall thickness will not only strengthen the intensity to
the compound wall copper–steel receiver can reduce enhance the resistance of thermal stress, but also can
the deflection of tube receiver, it will introduce the con- increase the thermal capacity, which in turn will be benefit
tact resistance if the two stratifications cannot contact to alleviate the extremely nonuniform temperature distri-
well and the efficiency of solar radiation absorption will bution situation.
be affected. As seen from Fig. 1, the origin of coordinate system is
placed at the center of the external cylinder surface. In this
In this study, a new type of tube receiver for the para- study, the vector eccentric radius~ r (the origin of coordinate
bolic trough concentrator system is introduced with the system points to the center of the internal cylinder surface);
aim to reduce the thermal stresses. The ray–thermal–struc- the vector eccentricity~e (the projection of vector ~r on the y-
tural sequential coupled numerical analyses are adopted to axis); and the oriented angle / (the angle between the vec-
obtain the concentrated heat flux distributions, tempera- tor ~
r and the x-axis) are introduced to describe the shape of
ture distributions and thermal stress fields of tube receiver. eccentric tube receiver (Manglik and Fang, 1995). The ray–
thermal–structural sequential coupled numerical analyses
2. Construction of the new type receiver are adopted to obtain the concentrated heat flux distribu-
tions, temperature distributions and thermal stress fields
2.1. The aim of the new type receiver is to of both the eccentric and concentric tube receivers. The
effects of eccentricity and oriented angle variation on the
Reducing the thermal stresses effectively; thermal stresses of eccentric tube receiver are also investi-
Without adding the mass of tube receiver; gated in this study.
Easy to manufacture.
3. Methodology
Table 1
2
30000
Heat Flux W/m
Table 2 where rr, rz, rh and rvon are the radial stress, axial stress,
Thermal-physical properties of heat transfer fluid and tube receiver. circumferential stress and Von-Mises stress, respectively.
Property Fluid Tube receiver The resulted temperature fields defined at the nodes of
Thermal oil Stainless steel CFD analysis meshes are interpolated as input data to
Density (kg m3) 881.68 7900 the nodes of the thermal stress analysis meshes. This sim-
Specific heat (J kg1 K1) 1711 500 ulation approach is fairly straightforward and has been
Viscosity (106 Pa s) 3.86 –
Thermal conductivity (W m1 K1) 0.1237 25
adopted by many investigators (Steven and Macosko,
Poisson ratio – 0.25 1999; Qin et al., 2004; Jae and Allan, 2006; Friedrich
Young’s modulus (GPa) – 220 et al., 2008; Knaus et al., 2005; Wetzel et al., 2007).
Thermal expansion coefficient (106 K1) – 17.2 The validation of this simulation approach have been de-
scribed in Friedrich et al. (2008), Knaus et al. (2005),
Wetzel et al. (2007), and the comparisons between the
material of tube receiver, respectively (Kumar and Reddy, simulation results and the experimentations reveals a high
2009). The thermal-physical properties of the thermal oil level of compliance. Compared to meshes of the CFD
and stainless steel are presented in Table 2. As the key analysis, a much finer solid part meshes are used for the
point of this paper is to put forward a new type of tube FEA analysis to produce a reasonably accurate degrees
receiver, the comparisons between the new type receiver of freedom solution.
and concentric tube receiver are carried out under the same
boundary condition with the hypothesis that there are no
air bubbles in the flow. The boundary conditions applied 4. Results and discussion
on both the eccentric and concentric tube receivers are
illustrated as follows: 4.1. Comparison between the concentric and eccentric tube
receiver
The flow has a uniform velocity u = 0.15 m/s at the
atmosphere temperature at the tube receiver inlet; The eccentric tube receiver with the center of internal
The top half periphery of tube receiver is subjected to a cylinder surface 3 mm moved upward along the y-axis
uniform heat flux distribution which is the sun average (the magnitude of vector eccentricity~ r is 3 mm, and the ori-
radiation in the air (the value is 1000 W/m2); ented angle / is 90°) is chosen for the comparison research.
The bottom half periphery of tube receiver is subjected The temperature distributions and thermal stress fields of
to the concentrated heat flux distribution calculated by eccentric tube receiver are compared with those of concen-
the Monte-Carlo ray tracing method which is fitted by tric tube receiver under the same boundary conditions and
six polynomial regression functions; material physical properties.
Zero pressure gradient condition is employed across the Fig. 4 shows the temperature distributions along the
fluid outlet boundary. internal circumference at the outlet section for both the
concentric and eccentric tube receivers. As seen from this
At the forth step, the finite element analysis (FEA) will figure, the concentric tube receiver has a higher value of
obtain the Von-Mises thermal stress fields, which is a syn- peak temperature which is about 11 °C higher than that
thesis stress of radial stress, axial stress and circumferential of eccentric tube receiver. Along the bottom half internal
stress. The governing thermal stress equations for hollow
cylinders (Fauple and Fisher, 1981) are expressed as
follows:
Z ro 420 Concentric
Ea 2
rz ¼ T ðrÞ r dr T ðrÞ ð2Þ Eccentric
ð1 mÞ r2 r20 r2i ri
400
Temperature K
Ea
rr ¼
ð1 mÞ r2 380
2 Z ro Z r
r r2i θ
2 T ðrÞ r dr T ðrÞ r dr ð3Þ
r0 r2i ri ri
360
Ea
rh ¼ 340
ð1 mÞ r2
2 Z ro Z r
r þ r2i 2 320
2 T ðrÞ r dr þ T ðrÞ r dr T ðrÞ r
r0 r2i ri ri 0 60 120 180 240 300 360
o
ð4Þ θ
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Fig. 4. Temperature profiles along the internal circumference at the outlet
rvon ¼ r2z þ r2r þ r2h ðrz rr þ rr rh þ rh rz Þ ð5Þ
section for both the concentric and eccentric tube receivers.
F. Wang et al. / Solar Energy 84 (2010) 1809–1815 1813
320
160
Concentric Concentric
280 Eccentric
Eccentric
Thermal Stress (MPa)
120 θ
Effective Stress MPa
240
ϕ
200
80
160
40 120
80
0
0 60 120 180 240 300 360 -90 -60 -30 0 30 60 90
Oriented Angle ϕ
o
θ
Fig. 5. Thermal stress profiles along the internal circumference at the Fig. 7. Relationship between oriented angle variation and peak thermal
outlet section for both the concentric and eccentric tube receivers. stress values.
1814 F. Wang et al. / Solar Energy 84 (2010) 1809–1815
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