AlCrO protected textured stainless-steel surface for high temperature solar selective absorber applications

Platinum-Based High Temperature Selective Absorber Coatings

In photothermal energy conversion the absorbed solar flux is converted to heat which is then used directly or is converted to mechanical or electrical energy. Efficient receiver design requires that thermal losses from the absorber surface, which is the hottest element of the system, be minimised. Receivers are, in fact, generally classified according to their operating temperature ( I , 2). Th...

Highly Efficient Selective Metamaterial Absorber for High-Temperature Solar Thermal Energy Harvesting

In this work, a selective solar absorber made of nanostructured titanium gratings deposited on an ultrathin MgF2 spacer and a tungsten ground film is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Normal absorptance of the fabricated solar absorber is characterized to be higher than 0.9 in the UV, visible and, near infrared (IR) regime, while the mid-IR emittance is around 0.2. The high broadband ab...

Optimization of high temperature SiC volumetric solar absorber

Focusing on radiative properties (absorption and scattering coefficient, scattering phase-function) of silicon carbide foams, several predictive models are compared to spectral transmittance and reflectance measurements (bi-directional and directionalhemispherical) in the aim of determining new correlations based on ceramic foam characteristics (struts/pores size and porosity). A mono-dimension...

Chemical Surface Treatment of Stainless Steel

Selective Solar Absorber Materials: Nanostructured Surfaces

Current solar to thermal energy conversion technologies, including concentrated solar power (CSP) and solar water heaters (SWH) utilize absorber surfaces that collect incident solar radiation. However, these absorber surfaces emit thermal energy (at their temperature) in the infrared (IR) spectrum, resulting in decreased overall efficiency for solar-to-thermal conversion. Selective absorber sur...