Publications

Reflux heat-pipe receivers have been identified as a desirable interface to couple a Stirling-cycle engine with a parabolic dish solar concentrator. The reflux receiver provides power nearly isothermally to the engine heater heads while decoupling the heater head design from the solar absorber surface design. The independent design of the receiver and engine heater head leads to higher system efficiency. Heat pipe reflux receivers have been demonstrated at approximately 65 kW{sub t} power throughput. Several 25 to 30-kW{sub e} Stirling-cycle engines are under development, and will soon be incorporated in commercial dish-Stirling systems. These engines will require reflux receivers with power throughput limits reaching 90-kW{sub t}. The extension of heat pipe technology from 60 kW{sub t} to 100 kW{sub t} is not trivial. Current heat pipe wick technology is pushed to its limits. It is necessary to develop and test advanced wick structure technologies to perform this task. Sandia has developed and begun testing a Bekaert Corporation felt metal wick structure fabricated by Porous Metal Products Inc. This wick is about 95% porous, and has liquid permeability a factor of 2 to 8 times higher than conventional technologies for a given maximum pore radius. The wick has been successfully demonstrated in a bench-scale heat pipe, and a full-scale on-sun receiver has been fabricated. This report details the wick design, characterization and installation into a heat pipe receiver, and the results of the bench-scale tests are presented. The wick performance is modeled, and the model results are compared to test results.

Pool-boiler reflux receivers have been considered as an alternative to heat pipes for the input of concentrated solar energy to Stirling-cycle engines in dish-Stirling electric generation systems. Pool boilers offer simplicity in design and fabrication. The operation of a full-scale pool-boiler receiver has been demonstrated for short periods of time. However, to generate cost-effective electricity, the receiver must operate without significant maintenance for the entire system life, as much as 20 to 30 years. Long-term liquid-metal boiling stability and materials compatibility with refluxing NaK-78 is not known and must be determined for the pool boiler receiver. No boiling system has been demonstrated for a significant duration with the current porous boiling enhancement surface and materials. At least one theory explaining lncipientboiling behavior of alkali metals indicates that favorable start-up behavior should deteriorate over time. Many factors affect the stability and startup behavior of the boiling system. Therefore, it is necessary to simulate the full-scale pool boiler design as much as possible, including flux levels, materials, and operating cycles. On-sun testing is impractical because of the limited test time available. A test vessel was constructed with a Friction Coatings Inc, porous boiling enhancement surface. The boiling surface consisted of a brazed stainless steel powder with about 50% porosity. The vessel was heated with a quartz lamp array providing about 90 Wlcm2 peak incident thermal flux. The vessel was charged with NaK-78, which is liquid at room temperature. This allows the elimination of costly electric preheating, both on this test and on fullscale receivers. The vessel was fabricated from Haynes 230 alloy, selected for its high temperature strength and oxidation resistance. The vessel operated at 750°C around the clock, with a 112-hour shutdown cycle to ambient every 8 hours. Temperature data was continually collected. The test completed 7500 hours of lamp-on operation time, and over 1000 startups from ambient. The test was terminated when a small leak in an lnconel 600 thermowell was detected. The test design and data are presented here. Metallurgical analysis of virgin and tested materials has begun, and initial results are also presented.

Alkali metal heat-pipe receivers have been identified as a desirable interface to couple a Stirling-cycle engine with a parabolic dish solar concentrator. The reflux receiver provides power nearly isothermally to the engine heater heads while de-coupling the heater head design from the solar absorber surface design. The independent design of the receiver and engine heater head leads to high system efficiency. Heat pipe reflux receivers have been demonstrated at approximately 30 kW{sub t} power throughput by others. This size is suitable fm engine output powers up to 10 kW{sub e}. Several 25-kW{sub e}, Stirling-cycle engines exist, as well as designs for 75-kW{sub t} parabolic dish solar concentrators. The extension of heat pipe technology from 30 kW{sub t} to 75 kW{sub t} is not trivial. Heat pipe designs are pushed to their limits, and it is critical to understand the flux profiles expected from the dish, and the local performance of the wick structure. Sandia has developed instrumentation to monitor and control the operation of heat pipe reflux receivers to test their throughput limits, and analytical models to evaluate receiver designs. In the past 1.5 years, several heat pipe receivers have been tested on Sandia`s test bed concentrators (TBC`s) and 60-kW{sub t} solar furnace. A screen-wick heat pipe developed by Dynatherm was tested to 27.5 kW{sub t} throughput. A Cummins Power Generation (CPG)/Thermacore 30-kW{sub t} heat pipe was pushed to a throughput of 41 kW{sub t} to verify design models. A Sandia-design screen-wick and artery 75-kW{sub t} heat pipe and a CPG/Thermacore 75-kW{sub t} sintered-wick heat pipe were also limit tested on the TBC. This report reviews the design of these receivers, and compares test results with model predictions.

Pool-boiler reflux receivers have been considered as an alternative to heat pipes for the input of concentrated solar energy to Stirling-cycle engines in dish-Stirling electric generation systems. Fool boilers offer simplicity in desip and fabrication. Pool-boiler solar receiver operation has been demonstrated for short periods of time. However, in order to generate cost-effective electricity, the receiver must operate without significant maintenance for the entire system life. At least one theory explaining incipient-boiling behavior of alkali metals indicates that favorable start-up behavior should deteriorate over time. Many factors affect the stability and startup behavior of the boiling system. Therefore, it is necessary to simulate the full-scale design in every detail as much as possible, including flux levels materials, and operating cycles. On-sun testing is impractical due to the limited test time available. No boiling system has been demonstrated with the current porous boiling enhancement surface and materials for a significant period of time. A test vessel was constructed with a Friction Coatings Inc. porous boiling enhancement surface. The vessel is heated with a quartz lamp array providing about 92 W/Cm{sup 2} peak incident thermal flux. The vessel is charged with NaK-78, which is liquid at room temperature. This allows the elimination of costly electric preheating, both on this test and on full-scale receivers. The vessel is fabricated from Haynes 230 alloy, selected for its high temperature strength and oxidation resistance. The vessel operates at 750{degrees}C around the clock, with a 1/2-hour shutdown cycle to ambient every 8 hours. Temperature data is continually collected. The test design and initial (first 2500 hours and 300 start-ups) test data are presented here. The test is designed to operate for 10,000 hours, and will be complete in the spring of 1994.

Heat-Pipe reflux receivers have been identified as a desirable interface to couple a Stirling engine with a parabolic dish solar concentrator. The reflux receiver provides power uniformly and nearly isothermally to the engine heater heads while de-coupling the heater head design from the solar absorber surface design. Therefore, the heat pipe reflux receiver allows the receiver and heater head to be independently thermally optimized, leading to high receiver thermal transport efficiency. Dynatherm Corporation designed and fabricated a screen-wick heat-pipe receiver for possible application to the Cummins Power Generation, Inc. first-generation 4 kW{sub e} free-piston dish-Stirling system, which required up to 30 kW{sub t}. The receiver features a composite absorber wick and a homogeneous sponge-wick on the aft dome to provide sodium to the absorber during hot restarts. The screen wick is attached to the absorber dome by spot welds. Refluxing troughs collect the condensate in a cylindrical condenser and return it directly to the absorber surface. The receiver was fabricated and lamp tested to 16 kW{sub t} throughput by Dynatherm. The receiver has been tested on Sandia`s 60 kW{sub t} solar furnace to a throughput power of 27.5 kW{sub t} and vapor space temperature up to 780{degrees}C. Infrared thermography was used to monitor the entire absorber dome for impending dryout while the receiver was tested. The receiver was started using solar input, without the assistance of electrical pre-heaters. The power was extracted with a gas-gap cold-water calorimeter to simulate the operation of a Stirling engine. The receiver design, thermal performance analysis, flux distribution analysis, test results, and post-test analysis are presented. 11 refs.

The efficient operation of a Stirling engine requires the application of a high heat flux to the relatively small area occupied by the heater head tubes. Previous attempts to couple solar energy to Stirling engines generally involved directly illuminating the heater head tubes with concentrated sunlight. In this study, operation of a 75-kW{sub t} sodium reflux pool-boiler solar receiver has been demonstrated and its performance characterized on Sandia's nominal 75-kW{sub t} parabolic-dish concentrator, using a cold-water gas-gap calorimeter to simulate Stirling engine operation. The pool boiler (and more generally liquid-metal reflux receivers) supplies heat to the engine in the form of latent heat released from condensation of the metal vapor on the heater head tubes. The advantages of the pool boiler include uniform tube temperature, leading to longer life and higher temperature available to the engine, and decoupling of the design of the solar absorber from the engine heater head. The two-phase system allows high input thermal flux, reducing the receiver size and losses, therefore improving system efficiency. The receiver thermal efficiency was about 90% when operated at full power and 800{degree}C. Stable sodium boiling was promoted by the addition of 35 equally spaced artificial cavities in the wetted absorber surface. High incipient boiling superheats following cloud transients were suppressed passively by the addition of small amounts of xenon gas to the receiver volume. Stable boiling without excessive incipient boiling superheats was observed under all operating conditions. The receiver developed a leak during performance evaluation, terminating the testing after accumulating about 50 hours on sun. The receiver design is reported here along with test results including transient operations, steady-state performance evaluation, operation at various temperatures, infrared thermography, x-ray studies of the boiling behavior, and a postmortem analysis.

The feasibility of competitive, modular bulk electric power from the sun may be greatly enhanced by the use of a reflux heat pipe receiver to combine a heat engine such as Stirling with a paraboloidal dish concentrator. This combination represents a potential improvement over previous successful demonstrations of dish-electric technology in terms of enhanced performance, lower cost, longer life, and greater flexibility in engine design. There are, however, important issues and unknowns which must be addressed to determine engineering feasibility of these devices. In the pool boiler reflux receiver, concentrated solar radiation causes liquid metal (sodium or potassium) to boil. The vapor flows to the engine heater heads, where it condenses and releases the latent heat. The condensate is returned to the receiver absorber pool by gravity (refluxing). This is essentially an adaptation of heat pipe technology to the peculiar requirements of concentrated solar flux, and provides many advantages over conventional heated tube receiver technology. Boiling theory indicates that long-term stable boiling of liquid metal may be difficult to achieve. Laboratory scale experiments have been performed. Initial tests confirmed that boiling is unstable in a baseline boiler. Boiling stability was established after the addition of ''artificial cavities'' to the heated surface, and successful boiling of sodium was demonstrated for 100 hours. Other stabilizing influences may have been present, and will be discussed. The flux and geometry closely simulated a real receiver. The results of these tests are presented, along with the design of a full scale receiver for on-sun testing and considerations for long term operation. 15 refs., 10 figs.