Upscaling and Testing of Air-Based Rotary Solar Thermal Receivers for Concentrated Solar Power Applications

Odqa Renewable Energy Technologies Ltd has successfully scaled its air-based rotary solar thermal receiver design from 10kW to 100kW. A 10kW-scale air-based rotary solar thermal receiver was tested in Odqa’s in-house solar simulator facility in late-2022. Learning from the experience, an improved solar thermal receiver rotor geometry has been developed and built, its mechanical design has been proven in a heliostat field test carried out at PROTEAS, The Cyprus Institute. A Predictive Engineering Analytics approach has been developed to predict the thermal performance and for the purpose of upscaling of the solar thermal receiver. As a result, the thermal design for a 100kW-scale solar thermal receiver has been produced, which subsequently was built at Odqa and tested at the SynLight solar simulator facility at the Institute of Solar Research, German Aerospace Center (DLR).