Evaluation of Advanced Sodium Receiver Losses During Operation of the IEA/SSPS Central Receiver System

This article presents the measurements and experiments conducted on the external receiver: the so-called Advanced Sodium Receiver (ASR) of the Small Solar Power Systems (SSPS) Project of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in southern Spain. The basis of this experiment was to provide loss measurements for later use in determining receiver performance. The tests to evaluate thermal losses consisted in operating the receiver with the doors open and circulating the sodium in normal and reverse flow without providing any incident power from the heliostat field (flux-off technique). In this way, total thermal losses are calculated as the energy lost by the sodium. Radiative losses have been calculated based on theoretical calculations and some results have been compared with infrared thermography measurements. Conductive losses are small and have been estimated by flux-off experiments with the receiver doors closed. Convective losses were evaluated subtracting radiative and conductive losses from the total thermal losses. Optical losses were assessed using absorptance measurements of the receiver coating. A simplified analytical model has been developed to calculate losses and ASR efficiency during operation. In spite of the method’s simplicity, the results are very similar to those found by other investigators, verified simulation programs, and test results.