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Effect of pore size and porosity distribution on radiation absorption and thermal performance of porous solar energy absorber

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Abstract

In this paper, experimental and numerical study were both conducted to investigate the effect of pore size and porosity distribution on radiation absorption and thermal performance of porous solar energy absorber. Ultraviolet-visible-near infrared (UV-Vis-NIR) spectrophotometer was used to measure the transmittance of porous media to reflect its radiation absorption capabilities. Numerical model was established based on the assumption of thermal nonequilibrium condition as well as using P1 model to consider the radiation heat transfer. The UV-Vis-NIR spectrophotometer measurement showed that: (1) With smaller pore size, the spectral transmittance of the porous media would be lower and the solar radiation absorption would be better; (2) Among the materials with different pore size distributions, pore-size-decreased combo and pore-size-increased combo have almost equal absorption coefficient which are higher than that of uniform structure. Numerical simulation demonstrated that: (3) For materials with different pore size distributions, pore-size-decreased structure has the best radiation absorption due to its ability of maximizing the volumetric absorption effect, which is agreed with the UV-Vis-NIR spectrophotometer experimental results; (4) For materials with different porosity distributions, porosity-gradually-increased structure has the highest mean fluid/solid temperatures because it can utilize the enhanced convective/conductive heat transfer to improve the overall thermal performance of porous receiver; (5) Porous structure with pore-size-decreased distribution and porosity-gradually-increased distribution has the best thermal performance of which the mean temperatures of fluid/solid phases are the highest among all the studied cases.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Industrial Catalysis, School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Tao Xie, KaiDi Xu & BoLun Yang

  2. Key Laboratory of Thermo-Fluid Science and Engineering of Ministry of Education, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    YaLing He

Authors
  1. Tao Xie
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  2. KaiDi Xu
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  3. BoLun Yang
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  4. YaLing He
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Correspondence to Tao Xie.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51606142), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2016M592787), the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (Grant No. 2017JQ5001), the FundamentalResearch Funds For the Central Universities (Grant No. xjj2016049), and Creative Team Plan (Grant No. cxtd2017004) in Xi’an Jiaotong University. XIE Tao also wants to express gratitude to Prof. Dudukovic M P, Prof. WANG FuQiang and CHEN Xue who gave a lot of help during this study.

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Xie, T., Xu, K., Yang, B. et al. Effect of pore size and porosity distribution on radiation absorption and thermal performance of porous solar energy absorber. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 62, 2213–2225 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-018-9440-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-018-9440-8

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