• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.161-164
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• 2008

For the development of solar thermal power tower plant from the early 80' to today, various kinds of receiver have been tested and evaluated. Most of 1st generation receiver used water/steam as a working fluid to operate steam turbine and now the first commercial solar power tower PS-10 also makes saturated steam. However, to increase thermal efficiency of storage system and to obtain practical use of solar energy, molten salt system have been used from THEMIS project in France at 1984. The Solar Tres plant of 17 MWe power generation will be constructed in Spain and have plan to operate 24 hours in summer. The air volumetric receiver system can be integrated with combined cycle of gas turbine and HRSG and also with steam turbine easily. Therefore, related researches to develop higher efficient solar power tower plant and to operate with stable are widely performed in the world.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.121-128
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• 2007

Convective heat loss from solar tower receiver is experimentally investigated in wind tunnel with tilt angles and operating conditions. In order to simulate the receiver, an electric heater, which is made of aluminum (width : 100 mm, height : 100mm) is used and installed in the wind tunnel. The convective heat loss from the receiver is dependent on the direction and the velocity of the wind and the surface temperature of the receiver. The tilt angle and surface temperature of the receiver are varied from 0o (cavity facing straight down) and 90o(cavity aligned horizontally) and from $150^{\circ}C$ to $250^{\circ}C$, respectively. Also, the wind speed is changed from 0 to 4m/s. The convective heat loss is obtained by measuring consumed power to the heater to maintain the desired surface temperature. It is concluded that Nusselt number increases with increasing wind speed for all cases. Especially, it is showed that Nusselt number can be maximized when the tilt angle is 30o.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2012.03a
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• pp.120-125
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• 2012

Daegu Solar Power Tower Plant of a 200 kW thermal capacity uses an open air receiver. An air receiver is generally based on the volumetric receiver concept with porous ceramic absorbers. Because absorber material is important in the volumetric receiver, ceramic materials with excellent thermal conductivity, high solar absorptivity and good thermal stability have been researched. KIER also developed SiC honeycomb absorber modules and evaluated performance of the modules at the KIER solar furnace. For performance evaluation, we made an open volumetric receiver containing the modules and measured the outlet temperature and the efficiency. It is demonstrated that performance of the KIER absorber is comparable to that of a reference absorber developed by DLR.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.157-160
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• 2008

Solar receiver in the solar power tower system has a similarity to a boiler of the thermal power plant in many aspects. However Boiler is operated long time without stopping while solar receiver repeats start and stop every day. The objective of this study is to investigate start-up characteristics of solar receiver. The experimental device was constructed in a bench scale. Basic experimental condition of water/steam was set by 25 bar and $223^{\circ}C$. Initially, the heat was added into risers only, then another experiment with input into drum additionally was done. When the heat flux was valid only risers, it took about 300 minutes until the water temperature in drum reached $223^{\circ}C$. Water temperature of drum was increased by $44^{\circ}C$/hr with 91.14 g/s of water circulation. With additional heat input into drum, 200 minutes was required to reach $223^{\circ}C$. In this case temperature was increased $66^{\circ}C$/hr with 96.5 g/s of water circulation.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.80-88
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• 2011

Heliostat in the tower type solar thermal power plant is a sun tracking mirror system to reflect the solar energy to the receiver and the optical performance of it affects to the efficiency of whole power plant most significantly. Thus a solid understanding of heliostat's energy concentration characteristics is the most important step in designing of the heliostat field and the whole power plant. The work presented here is the analysis of energy concentration characteristics of heliostat used in 200kW solar thermal power plant, where the receiver located at 43m high in tower has $2{\times}2$m rectangular shape. The heliostat reflective surface is formed by 4 of $1{\times}1$m flat plate mirror facet and the mirror facet is mounted on the spherical frame. The direct normal incident radiation models in vernal equinox, summer solstice, autumnal equinox and winter solstice are first derived from the actually measured data. Then the intercept ratio, heat flux distribution and total energy collected at the receiver for the heliostats located in the various places of the heliostat field are investigated. Finally the effect of mirror facet installation error on the optical performance of the heliostat is analyzed.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.53-62
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• 2011

Heliostat in the tower type solar thermal power plant is a sun tracking mirror system to reflect the solar energy to the receiver and the optical performance of it affects to the efficiency of whole power plant most significantly. Thus a proper design of structure of the heliostat reflective surface could be the most important step in the construction of such power plant. The work presented here is a design of structure of optical surface of heliostat, which will be used in 200kW solar thermal power plant. The receiver located at 43(m) high from ground in tower has $2{\times}2$(m) rectangular shape. We first developed the software tool to simulate the energy concentration characteristics of heliostat using the ray tracing technique. Then, the shape of heliostat reflective surface is designed with the consideration of heliostat's energy concentration characteristics, production cost and productivity. The designed heliostat's reflective surface has a structure formed by canting four of $1{\times}1$(m) rectangular flat plate mirror facet and the center of each mirror facet is located on the spherical surface, where the spherical surface is formulated by the mirror facet mounting frame.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2008

This paper describes water circulation characteristics of a water/steam receiver at various heat fluxes. The water/steam receiver for a solar tower power system is a natural circulation type. Experimental conditions of water and steam were set at a pressure of 5 bar and temperature of $151.8^{\circ}C$. The experimental device for the water/steam receiver consisted of a steam drum, upper/lower header, riser tubes, and downcomer tube. The experiments were conducted by varying heat fluxes in terms of mass flow rate in each riser tube. However, the total mass flow rate on the riser tubes was fixed at 217.4 g/s. For the uniform heat flux, while the water temperature of the steam drum and upper header were kept at steady state, the temperature of the lower header was fluctuated. For the non-uniform heat flux, while the temperature of the steam drum was kept steady state, the temperature difference increased in the right and left side of the upper header, and the temperature of the lower header was fluctuated.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2012.03a
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• pp.274-279
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• 2012

Daegu Solar Power Tower Plant of 200 kW thermal capacity was developed for the first time in Korea, 2011. Measurement of the heat flux distribution is essential to evaluate the solar energy concentrated by reflectors and to design a suitable receiver. The flux mapping technique, which uses a radiometer and a diffuse plate, is common for measurement of the heat flux distribution. Because the solar power tower plant has a wide concentration area, the flux mapping technique using a fixed diffuse plate is difficult to apply. Therefore, the flux distribution in the solar power tower plant should be measured by the flux mapping technique using a small moving bar. In this study, we measured flux distributions with the moving-bar system developed at the KIER solar furnace and evaluated its applicability for the solar power tower plant.

• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.29-45
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• 2016

There has been a growing interest in the recent time for the development of solar power tower plants, which are mainly used for utility scale power generation. Combined heat and power (CHP) is an efficient and clean approach to generate electric power and useful thermal energy from a single heat source. The waste heat from the topping Brayton cycle is utilized in the bottoming HRSG cycle for driving steam turbine and also to produce process steam so that efficiency of the cycle is increased. A thermal storage system is likely to add greater reliability to such plants, providing power even during non-peak sunshine hours. This paper presents a conceptual configuration of a solar power tower combined heat and power plant with a topping air Brayton cycle. A simple downstream Rankine cycle with a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) and a process heater have been considered for integration with the solar Brayton cycle. The conventional GT combustion chamber is replaced with a solar receiver. The combined cycle has been analyzed using energy as well as exergy methods for a range of pressure ratio across the GT block. From the thermodynamic analysis, it is found that such an integrated system would give a maximum total power (2.37 MW) at a much lower pressure ratio (5) with an overall efficiency exceeding 27%. The solar receiver and heliostats are the main components responsible for exergy destruction. However, exergetic performance of the components is found to improve at higher pressure ratio of the GT block.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.3389-3394
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• 2007

Characteristics of heat transfer and pressure drops of fills for solar tower volumetric air receivers are experimentally investigated with the material and the thickness. The volumetric air receiver considered in this paper consists of a ceramic tube and fills are inserted in the ceramic tube. Air is used as the working fluid. Two materials, which are a honeycomb(diameter: 100mm, thickness: 30mm) and laminated mesh(diameter: 100mm, thickness: 1mm), are considered as the fills. In order to investigate the characteristics of heat transfer of fills, this volumetric air receiver is heated by an electric heater and air temperatures in ceramic tube are measured. Also, the radiative shields are installed to measure the only air temperature. In addition, the pressure losses are measured with the thickness of fills while the air goes through the fills inserted in an acrylic tube. The flow becomes turbulent and fully developed in front of the fills. The results show that the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of the laminated mesh are superior to those of the honeycomb.