SOLAR MIRRORS CHARACTERIZATION FOR CONCENTRATING SOLAR POWER TECHNOLOGY

The increasing availability on the market of different types of solar reflectors such as: polymeric film mirrors, aluminum mirrors and thin glass mirrors, together with: the lack of available norms in this area, and a valid methodology to compare the performances of the candidate reflectors; highlights the necessity to conduct a more detailed analysis on these new technologies. The objective of the present work is to suggest a valuable method to compare the reflectance performance of mirrors, evaluating also their performances in order to assess: - the most durable to ageing and weathering effects; - the different reflectance behavior with the variation of the solar incident angle. .For these reasons the work here proposed was carried out with an experimental apparatus composed by: - An Agilent Cary 5000 UV/Vis/NIR spectrophotometer to test the different performance of the mirrors at different characterization steps; - An integrating sphere of 150 mm in diameter (DRA ¡V Diffuse Reflectance Accessory); - A VASRA (Variable Angle Specular Reflection Accessory); - A UV chamber to accelerate the ageing process; - A £gScan SMS Scatterometer for RMS Roughness and BDSF measurement; - An outdoor bench The work was completed with two modeling tools: - An engineering equation solver (Mathcad) to dynamically evaluate the behavior; - A ray tracing software (Soltrace) to evaluate the system¡¦s optical efficiency. The analysis indicates that the candidate reflectors can be accurately characterized with five fundamental parameters: a) £lSWH, the solar-weighted hemispherical reflectance; b) £lSWS, the solar-weighted specular reflectance; c) £lSWS( á), the solar weighted specular reflectance function of the variable angle of incidence; d) BDSF, Bi Directional Scattering Function; e) RMS Roughness This evaluation will provide a valuable tool, for the companies who want to invest in concentrating solar power technology, to decide whether or not using a candidate reflectors to realize new plants, assessing their performances, their costs, and their durability.

Grantor dc:publisher

Università degli studi di Catania

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• CONTINO, ALESSANDRO

Contributors dc:contributor

• MARLETTA, Luigi
• CONSOLI, Alfio

• Specular Reflectance, Polymeric film reflector, Aluminum reflector, Thin glass reflector, high reflective mirrors, parabolic trough, BSDF, Scatterometer, UV/VIS NIR spectrophotometer, Integrating sphere, CSP, parabolic trough, renewable energy, optical efficiency, UV ageing test solar reflector, Solar Weighted Hemispherical Reflectance, Solar Weighted Specular Reflectance, RMS Roughness, Soltrace®, Mathcad®.

Statement dc:rights

• info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• license:PUBBLICO - Pubblico con Copyright
• license uri:iris.PUB02

Language dc:language

eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11769/594209

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.iris.unict.it:20.500.11769/594209