Direct Steam Generation with Dish Concentrators

This paper presents current research on Direct Steam Generation (DSG) by the Solar Thermal Group at ANU. It includes ongoing work on a transient model for a dish steam cavity receiver that is suitable for model-based control of DSG as well as reporting on the experimental set-up on a new 500m paraboloidal dish solar concentrator. A comparison of two transient models of a dish steam cavity receiver, one developed previously at the ANU with a new proposed model currently under development at the ANU Solar Thermal Group is presented. Both models are described and compared using a simulation using TRNSYS. A qualitative analysis is also included discussing the relative merits of each approach. In order to assess the thermal performance of the new 500 m dish, a steam receiver previously used in a 400m dish steam generation system is being re-instrumented and installed on the new dish. The rest of the 400m dish steam generation system is being assembled to work with the new 500m dish. The results of the first test of a Direct Steam Generation system on the SG4 dish are presented in this paper.