ASTRID© – Advanced Solar Tubular ReceIver Design: A powerful tool for receiver design and optimization

In solar tower power plants the receiver is one of the critical components. It converts the solar radiation into heat and must withstand high heat flux densities and high daily or even hourly gradients (due to passage of clouds). For this reason, the challenge during receiver design is to find a reasonable compromise between receiver efficiency, reliability, lifetime and cost. There is a strong interaction between the heliostat field, the receiver and the heat transfer fluid. Therefore, a proper receiver design needs to consider these components within the receiver optimization. There are several design and optimization tools for receivers, but most of them focus only on the receiver, ignoring the heliostat field and other parts of the plant. During the last years DLR developed the ASTRID© code for tubular receiver concept simulation. The code comprises both a high and a low-detail model. The low-detail model utilizes a number of simplifications which allow the user to screen a high number of receiver con...