Thermal losses and wind loads characterization for the final design of the SunDial receiver, the rotary Fresnel collector

The ASTEP project, funded by the EU Commission, is focused on the production of heat and cooling at the same time for processes using solar energy.

The collector is based in a rotary Fresnel design, SunDial, which was designed and optimized for the two processes that selected for the final test to reach TRL 5.

·        Pasteurization process with heat (175ºC) and cooling demand in a dairy factory in Greece (37.93 N), Mandrekas (MAND)

·        Preheating process over 220 ºC in a steel factory for metallic tubes processing in Romania (47.1 N), AMTP.

Once the final design had been decided it was necessary to simulate it for different operation conditions to develop models that characterized the thermal performance and to evaluate the aerodynamic loads that may affect the structure or the concentration of the rays. The code used was ANSYS-CFX r2020.

The SunDial design required the simulation of a large battery of cases considering aspect that are not present in standard Fresnel receivers. The wind load could also represent a threat to the integrity and/or global performance of the receiver so they were analyzed for this design.

The variance in thermal performance for different wind directions make that this factor had to be included in the thermal performance models.