Alberto García de Jalón

Towards standardization of in-site parabolic trough collector testing in solar thermal power plants

This paper presents a summary of the testing procedure and a validation of the methodology of parabolic trough collector in solar thermal power plants. The applied testing methodology is the one proposed within the Spanish standardization sub-committee AEN/CTN 206/SC117 working group WG2 related to the components for solar thermal power plants. This methodology is also proposed within the international committee IEC TC 117 (Standard draft IEC 62862-3-2 Ed. 1.0). This study is done at Plataforma Solar de Almeria (PSA) in Almeria within the European project STAGE-STE. This paper presents the results of the optical and thermal efficiency of a large-size parabolic trough collector. The obtained values are similar to the previous analysis on this collector by PSA. The results of the tracking system have a good accuracy compared to the acceptance angle of the concentrator.

Parabolic trough receiver heat loss and optical efficiency round robin 2015/2016

A round robin for parabolic trough receiver heat loss and optical efficiency in the laboratory was performed between five institutions using five receivers in 2015/2016. Heat loss testing was performed at three cartridge heater test benches and one Joule heating test bench in the temperature range between 100 °C and 550 °C. Optical efficiency testing was performed with two spectrometric test bench and one calorimetric test bench. Heat loss testing results showed standard deviations at the order of 6% to 12 % for most temperatures and receivers and a standard deviation of 17 % for one receiver at 100 °C. Optical efficiency is presented normalized for laboratories showing standard deviations of 0.3 % to 1.3 % depending on the receiver.