Study of Stirling Engine Receiver for Solar Thermal Power

태양열 발전용 스터링엔진 흡수기 특성연구

Stirling engine for solar thermal power is an essential part of Dish-Stirling system which generates electricity by using direct normal irradiation and will go into commercialization in near future. For the Stirling engine used in this study is Solo 161 model the capacity of which is 10 kWe and was already used for the Dish-Stirling system of KIER in Jinhae. The receiver of Stirling engine absorbes concentrated solar radiation and transfer it to working fluid of Hydrogen. The working condition of striling engine is high temperature and high pressure to make high efficiency. Therefore the receiver should stand against high temperature of above 800 $^{\circ}C$ and high pressure of max. 150 bar with good performance of heat transfer. The receiver is composed of 78 Inconel tubes of 1/8" with thickness of 0.71 mm and two reserviors which is connected with two cylinders. In order to know the charaterristics of heat transfer of Stirling engine receiver, simulation on the heat transfer of the receiver of Solo 161 is conducted by using CFD code of Fluent. The heat flux on the receiver surface has a shape of Gaussian distribution so, it is necessary to simulate a whole receiver. However, It is difficult and time consuming to simulate the whole receiver that one tube with different heat flux conditions are considered in this study. From the simulation results, heat transfer charateristics of receiver are observed and tube wall and fluid temperature and heat transfer coefficient are obtained and compared with the calculated results from Dittus-Boelter's correlation.