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Radiation performance of dish solar

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Article in Solar Energy · January 2008

DOI: 10.1016/j.solener.2007.06.005

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Solar Energy 82 (2008) 13–21

www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

Radiation performance of dish solar concentrator/cavity

receiver systems
Yong Shuai, Xin-Lin Xia, He-Ping Tan *

School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China

Received 13 September 2006; received in revised form 2 June 2007; accepted 4 June 2007
Available online 17 July 2007

Communicated by: Associate Editor D. Yogi Goswami

Abstract

The Monte-Carlo ray-tracing method is applied and coupled with optical properties to predict radiation performance of dish solar
concentrator/cavity receiver systems. The effects of sunshape and surface slope error have been studied and the corresponding probability
models are introduced in this paper. Taking into account the above-mentioned factors, we show that the directional features of the focal
flux affect the radiation flux distribution of cavity receiver, present criteria for the characterization of directional attributes, and describe
a method for their calculation. Based on the concept of equivalent radiation flux, an upside-down pear cavity receiver is proposed in view
of directional attributes of focal flux. Receiver design and modelling guidelines are presented. The uniformity performance of the wall
flux is compared with five traditional geometries.
 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Monte-Carlo method; Radiation performance; Solar collector; Focal flux

1. Introduction tion of biomass in supercritical condition, the flux distribu-

Recently, medium–high temperature application is an
important topic in the solar energy field. There is a similar
process, which is the scenario of a paraboloidal dish con-
centrator collecting energy that is transported optically to
a central cavity receiver. The factors of manufacturing or
assembly errors, and unideal sunlight with an increased
angular diameter can bring about some poor phenomena,
such as a bigger energy spot in the focal region, non-unifor-
mity of heat flux distribution in the cavity receiver, or local
overheating in the cavity receiver. Especially in some cases,
such as hydrogen production via the solar thermal gasifica-
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 451 86412308; fax: +86 451
86413208.
E-mail addresses: shuaiyong78@yahoo.com.cn (Y. Shuai), tanhepin-
g77@yahoo.com.cn (H.-P. Tan).
tion in the cavity receiver has much effect on the efficiency
of hydrogen production. The radiation flux distribution in
the cavity receiver is depended on the directional distribu-
tion and quantity of concentrated energy.
The codes traditionally used for the design and simula-
tion of solar thermal central receiver plants, such as
HELIOS (Vittitoe and Biggs, 1976), CIRCE (Ratzel
et al., 1986), MIRVAL (Leary and Hankins, 1979), etc.,
were all written in the eighties, based in FORTRAN lan-
guage and in most cases their philosophy and structure
are neither modular nor user friendly. In addition, Daly
(1979) has used a backward ray tracing method to study
flux distributions produced by parabolic and circular cylin-
der solar concentrators. Jeter (1986) has developed an inte-
gral relationship for calculating the distribution of
concentrated flux in idealized paraboloidal solar collectors.
In the previous works for the performance of solar collec-
tor systems, the energy flux density distribution in the focal

0038-092X/$ - see front matter  2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.solener.2007.06.005
14 Y. Shuai et al. / Solar Energy 82 (2008) 13–21

plane is considered only, but the directional characteristics

of concentrated energy are neglected.
In this paper, flux distribution on the aperture plane of a
cavity receiver is studied by employing the Monte-Carlo
ray-tracing method, taking account of the effects of sun-
shape and surface slope error. According to quantitative
and directional attributes of the focal flux, an upside-down
pear shape of cavity receiver is proposed. We present a
method and the corresponding flowchart for the design
of this new shape cavity receiver. Five different cavity
geometries are compared on the radiation performance.

2. Methodology

The Monte-Carlo method is applied in this paper. Its

methodology consists of following stochastic paths of a
large number of rays as they interact with the surfaces.
Each ray carries the same amount of energy and has a spe-
cific direction determined from the appropriate probability
density function. What happens to each of these rays
depends on the emissive, reflection, and absorptive behav-
iour in the surface, which is described by a set of statistical
relationships.
When the reflectivity of the solar concentrator is qc, it is
fitted with the following expression,
Rr < qc ; reflection
ð1Þ
Rr > qc ; absorption
where Rr is a random number which is uniformity distrib-
uted between zero and one. The reflection direction of the
energy bundle follows from the Fresnel law of optics.
As shown in Fig. 1, the radiation flux qa on the aperture
plane and the wall flux qr,i of cavity receiver can be
obtained by the following expression, respectively.
N foc Esun
qa ¼ ð2Þ
Afoc ns
Esun X
N foc
qr;i ¼ Mj ð3Þ
Ai ns j¼1 i
where Nfoc is the number of energy bundles that reflected
by the solar concentrator and finally arrived at the aperture
plane, Afoc is the area of the aperture plane, Esun is the Sun
average irradiance in the air (the value of 1000.0 W/m2), qr,i
is the wall radiation flux of the ith surface element of cavity
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the dish solar concentrator/cavity receiver
system.
receiver, and Ai is the corresponding area. If the jth ray ar-
rives at the ith surface element of cavity receiver, M ji ¼ 1,
else M ji ¼ 0. For the sunlight, the number density of energy
bundles ns is defined as the number of energy bundle sam-
plings which exists in every square millimetre when the sun-
light vector, N~ sun is perpendicular to the emission surface.
If the angle between the sunlight directional vector with
the normal direction, N ~ surface of the emission surface is hsun
as shown in Fig. 2, the area of the emission surface is Aemi,
and then the total number of samplings Nemi that emitted
from this emission surface can be expressed as the follow-
ing equation,
N emi ¼ ns Aemi cos hsun ð4Þ
The accuracy of Monte-Carlo method is dependent
upon the number of dispatched energy bundles and pseu-
dorandomness of the random number generator. A com-
puter code based on the preceding calculation procedure
is written. The numerical experiments are carried out for
40 million (ns = 2), 200 million (ns = 10), 400 million
(ns = 20), 2 billion (ns = 100), and 4 billion (ns = 200)
energy bundles emitted from the imaginary emission sur-
face. Table 1 illustrates the convergence of the radiation
flux in the focal plane with the number of energy bundles

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of relationship between Earth and Sun.

 Y. Shuai et al. / Solar Energy 82 (2008) 13–21 15

Table 1
Focal flux distribution with increasing number of energy bundles (W/mm2) (for the case of focal length of 3 m, rim angle of 45, concentrator reflectivity of
0.9 and surface slope error of 3.5 mrad)
R (mm) ns = 2 ns = 10 ns = 20 ns = 60 ns = l00 ns = 200
0 12.238 12.159 12.136 12.135 12.134 12.134
1 12.069 12.084 12.086 12.087 12.088 12.085
2 11.976 11.975 11.979 11.978 11.975 11.978
3 11.836 11.839 11.826 11.827 11.827 11.825
4 11.601 11.614 11.615 11.615 11,617 11.618
5 11.367 11.377 11.372 11.374 11.373 11.373
6 11.083 11.073 11.082 11.081 11.080 11.080
7 10.760 10.757 10.753 10.752 10.752 10.749
8 10.370 10.372 10.379 10.378 10.380 10.380
9 9.975 9.987 9.983 9.980 9.981 9.982
10 9.541 9.550 9.550 9.553 9.554 9.554
11 9.109 9.102 9.105 9.105 9.105 9.105
12 8.632 8.634 8.637 8.636 8.635 8.636
13 8.155 8.156 8.159 8.159 8.157 8.158
14 7.674 7.671 7.667 7.668 7.668 7.669
15 7.185 7.178 7.177 7.177 7.177 7.176
16 6.683 6.681 6.683 6.684 6.685 6.685
17 6.195 6.201 6.202 6.201 6.201 6.201
18 5.732 5.727 5.724 5.724 5.723 5.723
19 5.254 5.260 5.259 5.258 5.258 5.259
20 4.813 4.812 4.810 4.812 4.812 4.811
21 4.385 4.383 4.383 4.382 4.381 4.381
22 3.976 3.972 3.972 3.971 3.971 3.972
23 3.585 3.587 3.585 3.585 3.585 3.584
24 3.220 3.220 3.220 3.220 3.221 3.222
25 2.884 2.881 2.882 2.882 2.882 2.882
26 2.565 2.567 2.567 2.566 2.567 2.567
27 2.281 2.278 2.279 2.278 2.277 2.277
28 2.011 2.013 2.011 2.011 2.011 2.011
29 1.768 1.769 1.769 1.769 1.769 1.769
30 1.550 1.551 1.551 1.551 1.550 1.550
Hqa 0.857 0.206 0.0878 0.0645 0.0310 –
CPU time 2421 s 12,209 s 25,067 s 13,0598 s 130,598 s 265,890 s

traced for collected radiation entering the cavity. It is clear lar surface element on the solar disk and the vector point-
that the difference goes essentially to zero as the number of ing from the earth towards the centre of the Sun. As shown
energy bundles increases, thus illustrating the convergence in Fig. 2, its maximum value hmax is evaluated with the fol-
of the radiation fluxes as Nemi becomes sufficiently large. lowing expression:
The value of the radiation flux corresponding to 4 billion  
d sun
is chosen as the ‘‘true’’ value, qa,true. hmax ¼ tan1 ð5Þ
Table 1 also shows the 
maximum percent difference, 2  L0
 
qa qa;true 
Hqa ¼ max  q   100% , between the corresponding where dsun is the diameter of the Sun, dearth is the diameter
a; true
radiation fluxes. The exact value for the true radiation flux of the Earth, and L0 is the distance between the Sun and
can only be obtained by tracing an infinite number of the Earth. Taking into account dsun = 1.392 · 109 m,
energy bundles. High accuracy results mean an increase dearth = dsun/109, and L0 = 1.496 · 1011 m, then
in the number of rays, but they can also cause processing hmax  4.65 mrad is calculated with Eq. (5).
time to grow rapidly. It is important to strike a balance According to the concept of solar limb darkening
between a solution that is sufficiently accurate for the described by Minnaert (1962), the following expression
requirements of the problem, whilst using the smallest can be deduced to determine the intensity distribution of
number of samples possible. It is possible to see that the solar disk.
radiation flux begins to converge to an acceptable accuracy
1 þ b cos u
(Hqa < 0:1%Þ when the number density of energy bundles is I ¼ I0 ð6Þ
1þb
20.
where u denotes the angle of a surface element on the solar
3. Effects of influential factors on focal flux sphere with the intensity of I, I0 is the intensity in the centre
of the solar disk, b is the limb darkening parameter.
The sun is not a point light source; the non-parallelism h The limb darkening parameter is given four values of
denotes the angle between the distance vector to a particu- 0.0, 0.8, 1.0, and 1.2, respectively, in this study to provide
16 Y. Shuai et al. / Solar Energy 82 (2008) 13–21

an approximation of the measured sunshape that is plotted

in Fig. 3. Since this parameter controls the degree of limb
darkening, with a decrease in the limb darkening parame-
ter, the curvature of intensity distribution curve of solar
disk decreases as shown in Fig. 3. The limb darkening
parameter, b, is given a value of 0.8 in the present analysis
to provide an approximation to the measured sunshape
(Johnston, 1998).
Incident radiation for concentrators comes directly from
the solar disc, which has a half-angle of 4.65 mrad, and
from the annular circumsolar region, which has its inner
limit at the edge of the solar disc, and its outer limit gener-
ally set at the acceptance angle of a pyrheliometer (half-
angle typically 43.6 mrad). The circumsolar ratio (CSR)
is defined as the radiation within the circumsolar region,
divided by the radiation from the direct beam and circum- Fig. 4. Effect of the solar image due to various circumsolar ratios for a
solar regions combined. Fig. 4 shows the concentration paraboloidal dish with diameter 5 m, focal length 3 m and reflectivity 0.9.
ratio distribution in the focal plane at various CSR values
for a paraboloidal dish with diameter 5 m, focal length 3 m angle, / and the radial angle, h. Take into consideration
and reflectivity 0.9. The CSR values have little effect on the the small incident angle of 4.65 mrad, the tangential devia-
peak of concentration ratio in the focal plane, but the tion effect is not as significant as the radial deviation, its
radius of focal spot increases with the CSR value. How- value is usually ignored (Hutchinson and Lai, 1991). For
ever, the radius of focal spot has no obviously change when the radial deviation, it is defined as a Gaussian distribution
the CSR is less than 0.4, and the trend of change on the of values. So the probability function on surface slope error
radius increases when the CSR is greater than 0.4. Further- is given by the following form:
more, the radius for 90% flux capture is 0.015 m when the
CSR is equal to 0.05, and this radius is 0.02 m with the R/ ¼ 2p=/ ð7Þ
2
CSR of 0.8. A high concentration ratio usually means a h2
Rh ¼ 1  e 2r ð8Þ
lower cost receiver relative to the mirror area, but higher
optical losses due to radiation from the circumsolar region where R/ and Rh are random numbers which are unifor-
missing the receiver. Therefore the sunshape often defines mity distributed between zero and one, r is the standard
the maximum concentration ratio of a concentrator. In this deviation of the Gaussian distribution.
paper’s following numerical simulation, the sunshape is To examine the correctness of the probability model, the
taken to be a distribution with a circumsolar-ratio of measured values as given in Ref. (Johnston, 1995) are com-
0.05 and a limb darkening parameter of 0.8. pared. The proportion of high measured slope errors is
Slope error is applied primarily to the surface deviations very small, so it is underestimated to agree with an appro-
of the solar concentrator mirror surfaces. The surface nor- priate Gaussian distribution. From Fig. 5, it can be seen
mal angular deviation can be defined by both the tangential

Fig. 5. Comparison of measured values distribution and an appropriate

Gaussian distribution with standard deviation of 3.5 mrad for the surface
Fig. 3. Effect of limb darkening parameter for normalized intensity. normal errors.
 Y. Shuai et al. / Solar Energy 82 (2008) 13–21 17

Fig. 8. Five sampling positions in the focal region for analysing

directional characteristics of focal flux.

Fig. 6. Effect of standard deviation for surface error Gaussian

distributions.

Fig. 7. Effect of surface slope error for flux distributions at the focal plane Fig. 9. Direction distribution of focal flux with different positions for a
at a paraboloidal dish having a focal length of 1 m and 45 rim angle. paraboloidal dish having a focal length of 3 m and 45 rim angle.

that the results are close to the data in reference when the
standard deviation of surface slope error is 3.5 milliradian.
Furthermore, the manner in which the standard deviation
changes the surface normal probability percent distribution
is shown in Fig. 6. The outcome shows also the simple
result (Johnston, 1995) that the maximum probability per-
cent occurs when the surface normal deviation is equal to
the standard deviation value. In Fig. 7, the effect of surface
slope error on focal flux distribution is shown for the case
of focal length f = 1 m and rim angle urim = 45 in a parab-
oloidal dish concentrator. As seen from the figure, the
slope error broadens the flux distribution and the ‘‘higher’’
portion of the distribution ‘‘pulls in’’ accordingly to main-
tain the energy balance under this distribution.

4. Spatial characteristic of radiation flux

Five sampling positions (P1, P2, P3, P4 and P5) in the Fig. 10. Direction distribution of focal flux with different focal lengths at
focal region are employed to analyse spatial characteristics position one for a paraboloidal dish having a rim angle of 45.
18 Y. Shuai et al. / Solar Energy 82 (2008) 13–21

Fig. 11. Effect of rim angles for direction distribution of focal flux at a
paraboloidal dish having a focal length of 3 m and 45 rim angle.

Fig. 13. Six classical cavity geometries.

of radiation flux as shown in Fig. 8. These positions along
x axis direction are defined by a series of spots with radius
of 1 mm and centre of 0, 10, 20, 30, 50 mm, respectively.
The corresponding percent distributions of radiation flux
along the zenith angle, hP at five different positions are
shown in Fig. 9 for a paraboloidal dish having a focal
length f = 1 m, rim angle urim = 45 and surface slope error
of 3.5 milliradian. From Fig. 9, it can be seen that there is
an initial increase in percent distribution with zenith angle,
which reaches a peak and then sharply decreases. The
increase is due to the increasing reflective area of the con-
centrator that corresponds to a higher zenith angle. The
sharp decrease is evident as it is the rim of the concentrator.
We actually see that the maximum occurs at hP = 45, but
the peak value increases as the sampling position is far
away from the focal point. The effect of focal length for
the direction distribution of flux at the P1 is shown in
Fig. 14. Concentration ratio of focal region for a paraboloidal dish having
a focal length of 3 m and 45 rim angle.

Fig. 12. Comparison of flux distributions at the focal plane for ideal
paraboloidal dish having a focal length of 1 m and rim angles of 45 and Fig. 15. Flux distribution in the side wall of conical receiver for a solar
60. collector system having a focal length of 3 m and 45 rim angle.
 Y. Shuai et al. / Solar Energy 82 (2008) 13–21 19

Fig. 10 for the case of rim angle urim = 45. Spatial charac-
teristic studies with different focal lengths show no differ-
ence as the system is only simply scaled.
Moreover, the effect of rim angle is plotted in Fig. 11 for
the case of focal length f = 3 m. Four different rim angles
have been chosen. The uniformity of direction distribution
changes for the better as the rim angle increases. The peak
value occurs where zenith angle is equal to rim angle as rim
angle is less or equal 45, but it occurs where zenith angle is
less than rim angle as rim angle is greater than 45.

5. Radiation performance of cavity receiver

To examine the correctness of the code, the same case is

calculated and compared with results obtained by Johnston
Fig. 16. Wall flux profile of five different cavity receivers for a solar (1998) using COMPREC code, and Jeter (1986) using ana-
collector system having a focal length of 3 m and 45 rim angle. lytical calculations. From Fig. 12, it can be seen that the

Fig. 17. The calculation flow chart of shape optimization process.

20 Y. Shuai et al. / Solar Energy 82 (2008) 13–21

results are in very good agreement with the data in

references.
With regard to the solar receiver, this means that the
cavity receiver geometry can be selected to effectively cap-
ture the solar energy while accommodating the unusually
challenging fatigue conditions within the smallest possible
volume. Six different cavity geometries are considered in
the analysis (Fig. 13). Surfaces are assumed to be black
and reflection and emission are assumed to be diffuse.
The parabolic dish concentrator analysed has a rim angle
of 45 and a focal length of 3 m, giving an aperture area
of 19.4 m2.
The conical cavity geometry is chosen to simulate radi-
ation characteristics in this paper. Fig. 14 shows the local
concentration ratio distribution on the aperture plane for
the case of 3.5 mrad of surface slope error and 0.9 of con-
centrator reflectivity. For a conical cavity receiver with
0.1 m-entry radius, 0.05 m-bottom radius and 0.25 m
height, we see an approximately Gaussian shape distribu-
tion with the peak value close to 1.4 · 104 and a small
extent of 23-mm-radius circle for 90% flux capture. It is Fig. 18. The sketch shape pattern of upside-down pear cavity receiver.
clear that the effects of sunshape and surface slope error
increase non-uniformity of heat flux distribution in the
conical receiver. And the maximum radiation flux of
0.411 W/mm2 lies at the position where the radius of recei-
ver is 79.5 mm, as shown in Fig. 15.
The primary effect of cavity geometry is to vary the radi-
ation flux distribution on the inside walls. Typical flux pro-
files for the five cavity geometries are shown in Fig. 16. A
cone shaped distribution in the peak zone can be seen in
Fig. 16 for the four geometries (including heteroconical,
dome, conical and elliptical). This flux distribution can eas-
ily induce local overheating in the cavity receiver. In view
of good performance of uniform flux distribution, the
spherical receiver provides a good starting point for the
shape optimization of the cavity receiver. Fig. 17 shows
the program flowchart on the process of optimization.
Fig. 18 shows a schematic view of the result of shape opti-
mization. During the optimization procedure of the spher- Fig. 19. The dimensionless radiation flux as a function of the normalized
ical receiver, the base is narrowed and the top of the sphere radius of the receiver with various wall absorptivities.
stretched, leading to a shape similar to an upside-down
pear with its apex cut off. The pear design exhibits better from the top of the cavity receiver. This normalized flux,
spatial uniformity than the spherical receiver (Fig. 19). qr/qr,max, is obtained by dividing the radiation flux in the
As we can also see in Fig. 19, for the ‘‘upside-down pear’’ cavity receiver by the maximum flux in this case. As the
receiver, the radiation flux intensity has a sharp gradient at absorptivity a decreases from 1.0 to 0.7, the normalized
R = Rmax and a zero value at the bottom wall (R < Rmax) radiation flux in the bottom zone of the receiver increases
for the black wall surface, the main reason is that so far due to multi-reflection. The shape of the bottom area can
we have only considered the incident radiation in this also reduce multi-reflection losses (due to gray radiation)
paper. The Monte-Carlo method introduces statistical fluc- and energy loss (due to convection), and they will be deeply
tuations that would have a rough function for radiation studied in my future work. The simulation results can pro-
flux distribution. However, the Monte-Carlo statistical vide a good start to optimize the shape of cavity receiver in
fluctuations should be largely smoothed when a large num- further study.
ber of rays are simulated.
In a further analysis, the inner surfaces are assumed to 6. Conclusions
be gray and reflection and emission are assumed to be dif-
fuse. In Fig. 19, the normalized radiation flux on the recei- Radiation performance of dish solar concentrator/
ver is plotted as a function of the normalized radius R/Rmax cavity receiver system is studied using Monte-Carlo
 Y. Shuai et al. / Solar Energy 82 (2008) 13–21
method coupled with optical properties. Limb darkened
sun is given to investigate the influence of sunshape on
the flux distribution in the parabolic concentrator. The
circumsolar values have little effect on the peak of concen-
tration ratio, but radius of the focal spot increases with
the CSR value. The probability model of surface slope
error is introduced by the Gaussian distribution. Surface
slope error broadens the flux distribution and reduces
the peak value of the distribution to maintain the energy
balance.
The directional distribution of sunlight and its effect on
the performance of a cavity receiver are performed in this
paper. All cases examined in different sampling locations
of the focal zone show a similar trend. The peak value of
the percent directional distribution of radiation flux occurs
where the zenith angle hP is equal to the rim angle if
urim 6 45; otherwise, it occurs where the zenith angle is
less than the rim angle if urim > 45. Furthermore, this
value increases with the sampling location away from the
focus.
The five cavity geometries are evaluated on the uni-
formity of wall radiation flux; results indicate that cavity
geometry has a significant effect on overall flux dis-
tribution. Based on the concept of equivalent heat flux,
the spherical receiver with relatively good radiation
performance provides a starting point for the shape
optimization; thus, a desirable shape (upside-down pear)
may be achieved with almost uniform distribution. More
study is needed to better quantify multi-reflection losses
and free and forced convection losses from cavity
receivers.
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Acknowledgements
The work is supported by the China National Key Basic
Research Special Funds (No. 2003CB214500) and the Ma-
jor Project of International Cooperation and Exchanges
NSFC (No. 50620120442). The authors also thank the
financial support of HIT International Academic Exchange
Fund for Doctoral Students.
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