LAUSR

Abstract High temperature solar receivers can convert concentrated solar power to heat to drive chemical production or mechanical cycles to produce electricity. Transparent windows with selective coatings that reflect thermal radiation can be used to cover receivers to improve their efficiency. However, in parabolic dish concentrators (PDC) these windows can reflect or absorb incoming solar radiation, and may actually reduce the efficiency and power output from PDC receivers. In this work numerical analysis shows that one-dimensional transparent photonic crystal heat mirrors (TPCHMs), which have the form of a modified dielectric mirror, can be designed to be highly transmissive to solar radiation but highly reflective towards thermal radiation. Results show that TPCHMs can be designed to provide significant enhancements to PDC receiver efficiencies operating at lower solar concentration ratios. Specifically, numerical analysis shows efficiency improvements of at least 62%, and 193% compared to either open-face receivers or the case when the receiver window is coated with a transparent conducting oxide film at operating temperatures of 1000 K and 1500 K, respectively. These results suggest that TPCHM covers have potential for enhancing the performance of smaller PDC systems operating at relatively low solar concentration ratios.