The Development and Design of Steam/Water Central Solar Receivers for Commercial Application

Central tower solar receivers have many similarities to fossil-fuel-fired boilers in design, manufacturing, and construction. Babcock & Wilcox has designed several types of steam/water solar receivers. A typical DOE approach is to design, construct, and test in sequence a Subsystem Research Experiment (SRE) and a pilot plant, and then to scale it up to commercial sizes. In contrast, the normal approach of boiler manufacturers, and specifically Babcock & Wilcox, has been to design a sectionalized receiver and modularized components so they can be assembled in various sizes, capacities, and geometries to meet the requirements of the system and characteristics of the collector field. A receiver design having such features and using commercial-size and shop-assembled modules is described. Special design features are described to overcome the unbalance of north-to-south field flux ratios, effect of partial and transient cloud patterns, and a large number of thermal cycles. A parametric study to determine the maximum allowable heat flux on the heat transfer surface components is also described.