GLTRS--Glenn
TITLE AND SUBTITLE:
Design, Fabrication and Test of a High Efficiency Refractive Secondary Concentrator for Solar Applications

AUTHOR(S):
Wayne A. Wong, Steven M. Geng, Charles H. Castle, and Robert P. Macosko

REPORT DATE:
July 2000

FUNDING NUMBERS:
WU-632-81-0A-00

PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES):
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field
Cleveland, Ohio 44135-3191

PERFORMING ORGANIZATION REPORT NUMBER:
E-12385

SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES):
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Washington, DC 20546-0001

REPORT TYPE AND DATES COVERED:
Technical Memorandum

SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY REPORT NUMBER:
NASA TM-2000-210339
AIAA-2000-2998

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES:
Prepared for the 35th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Las Vegas, Nevada, July 24-28, 2000. Wayne A. Wong and Steven M. Geng, NASA Glenn Research Center; Charles H. Castle and Robert P. Macosko, Analex Corporation, 3001 Aerospace Parkway, Brook Park, Ohio 44142. Responsible person, Wayne A. Wong, organization code 5490, (216) 433-6318.

ABSTRACT:
Common to many of the space applications that utilize solar thermal energy such as electric power conversion, thermal propulsion, and furnaces, is a need for highly efficient, solar concentration systems. An effort is underway to develop the refractive secondary concentrator, which uses refraction and total internal reflection to efficiently concentrate and direct solar energy. When used in combination with advanced primary concentrators, the refractive secondary concentrator enables very high system concentration ratios (10,000 to 1) and very high temperatures (>2000 K). Presented is an overview of the effort at the NASA Glenn Research Center to evaluate the performance of a prototype single crystal sapphire refractive secondary concentrator and to compare the performance with analytical models. The effort involves the design and fabrication of a secondary concentrator, design and fabrication of a calorimeter and its support hardware, calibration of the calorimeter, testing of the secondary concentrator in NASA Glenn's Tank 6 solar thermal vacuum facility, and comparing the test results with predictions. Test results indicate an average throughput efficiency of 87 percent. It is anticipated that reduction of a known reflection loss with an anti-reflective coating would result in a secondary concentrator throughput efficiency of approximately 93 percent.

SUBJECT TERMS:
Secondary concentrators; Solar concentrators; Solar collectors;
Solar energy; Solar power generation; Solar propulsion; Solar furnaces

NUMBER OF PAGES:
15

PDF AVAILABLE FROM URL:
2000/TM-2000-210339.pdf
(757,210 KB)
This page contains an Adobe® Acrobat® Reader PDF file. The PDF documents have been created to show thumbnails of each page. If the thumbnails do not display properly, download the file to the hard drive and view through Acrobat® Reader. You can download Acrobat® Reader for free. click

NASA NASA GLTRS--Glenn

A service of the NASA Glenn Research Center Logistics and Technical Information Division

Suggestions or questions about this site can be directed to:

NASA official: Technical Publications Manager, Sue.E.Butts@nasa.gov

Web curator: Caroline.A.Rist@grc.nasa.gov

Privacy Policy and Important Notices