Introducing FIVER: An Open-Source Tool to Simulate Heat Transfer in Participating Media and Arbitrary Geometries

Decarbonization of industrial processes operating at above 1000 °C is a major challenge. A promising answer lies in concentrating solar thermal technologies, but current receivers operate at about 600 °C only. New concepts are needed to achieve the target temperatures with good efficiencies, thus enabling commercial deployments. Further advances require that researchers have access to simulation tools treating heat transfer problems in radiatively participating media accurately, which is seldom the case today. Here we present a first effort to bridge this gap, introducing FIVER (FInite VolumE Ray tracer), an open-source Matlab tool for solving transient radiative-conductive heat transfer problems in participating media with spectral properties and complex geometries. FIVER tackles the challenging simulations needed to design the solar receivers of the future, and we hope it will become a valuable tool for researchers investigating concentrating solar thermal receivers and other technologies needed to decarbonize high temperature processes.