Ammonia Receiver Design for Dish Concentrators

This paper describes a general method for evaluating receiver designs for ammonia-based energy storage with dish concentrators. The method involves ray-tracing to determine the concentrated solar flux profile on the reactor surface, followed by a simulation which calculates reaction extents and heat losses. In this paper, five receiver designs were investigated with varying cone angles and placements of tubes within the receiver. The receiver designs with highest conversion efficiency were found to be a frustum arrangement of reactor tubes with an angle of 7.5 degrees, and a cylindrical arrangement of reactor tubes with a radius of 77mm. These designs produced receiver efficiencies of 54.9% and 55.3% respectively. This computational receiver design evaluation continues. Following further experiments with the masked 20m dish concentrator, this design process will be able to be applied to the new SG4 Big Dish.