Scientific Publication: Experimental Devices to Investigate the Long-Term Stability of Phase Change Materials under Application Conditions

CIEMAT-PSA, FRAUNHOFER, and CEA published an article about SFERA-III in the 2020 year edition of the international journal Applied Sciences. The paper is available in open access.

Abstract

Drift is a relevant issue in concentrated solar tower facilities since this time-dependent pointing error severely affects their performance. This work deals with the optical analysis of drift for tilt-roll heliostats in terms of the geometrical parameters associated to the heliostat mechanical structure and the local time. For each drift source or error, flux maps have been obtained by means of Monte Carlo ray-tracing calculations as a function of the source magnitude and daily time in winter and summer solstices. Then the corresponding pointing errors and the drift curves are determined from the displacement of the center of gravity of the flux maps. As a result, drift related to each source is identified and characterized. Additionally, drift sources are compared in terms of the standard deviation and the mean of their daily pointing errors. The analysis evidences that main drift sources are the misalignments of the pedestal like the one of an inclination with respect to the zenith.

References

Title Experimental Devices to Investigate the Long-Term Stability of Phase Change Materials under Application Conditions

Authors Christoph Rathgeber, Stefan Hiebler, Rocío Bayón, Luisa F. Cabeza, Gabriel Zsembinszki, Gerald Englmair, Mark Dannemand, Gonzalo Diarce, Oliver Fellmann, Rebecca Ravotti, Dominic Groulx, Ali C. Kheirabadi, Stefan Gschwander, Stephan Höhlein, Andreas König-Haagen, Noé Beaupere, and Laurent Zalewski

Cite as Rathgeber, Christoph, Stefan Hiebler, Rocío Bayón, Luisa F. Cabeza, Gabriel Zsembinszki, Gerald Englmair, Mark Dannemand, Gonzalo Diarce, Oliver Fellmann, Rebecca Ravotti, Dominic Groulx, Ali C. Kheirabadi, Stefan Gschwander, Stephan Höhlein, Andreas König-Haagen, Noé Beaupere, and Laurent Zalewski. 2020. “Experimental Devices to Investigate the Long-Term Stability of Phase Change Materials under Application Conditions” Applied Sciences 10, no. 22: 7968. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10227968