Abstract Combined cycle concentrating solar power (CSP) plants provide significant potential to achieve an efficiency increase and an electricity cost reduction compared to current single-cycle plants. A combined cycle CSP system requires a receiver technology capable of effectively transferring heat from concentrated solar irradiation to a pressurized air stream in a gas turbine. The novel spiky central receiver air pre-heater (SCRAP) technology is proposed to overcome barriers experienced to date. The SCRAP receiver is a novel metallic receiver technology aimed at pre-heating an air stream to about 800 °C, either prior to a combustion chamber or alternatively prior to a cascaded secondary non-metallic receiver system, capable of achieving elevated temperatures. A ray-tracing analysis demonstrated that the flux imposed on the absorber assemblies is dependent on the heliostat size. A thermodynamic computer model was developed to investigate the performance characteristics of the absorber assemblies (spikes) of the SCRAP receiver. The model was validated against an experimental test setup. Satisfactory agreement at various air flow rates was obtained. The thermal efficiency of the spikes was investigated and used to approximate the receiver’s solar-thermal efficiency. The receiver is predicted to perform at solar-thermal efficiencies exceeding 80%. The geometric design of the receiver achieves a relatively low radiative heat loss, predicted at about 4–5%. A relatively large vulnerability to convective heat losses was identified. The pressure loss was found to be relatively low, compared to existing alternative receiver designs, with system pressure losses below 40 mbar achievable.

中文翻译：

---

Spiky 中央接收器空气预热器 (SCRAP) 的性能特征

摘要 与当前的单循环发电厂相比，联合循环聚光太阳能 (CSP) 发电厂具有实现效率提高和电力成本降低的巨大潜力。联合循环 CSP 系统需要一种接收器技术，该技术能够有效地将来自集中太阳辐射的热量传递到燃气轮机中的加压空气流中。提出了新颖的尖刺中央接收器空气预热器 (SCRAP) 技术以克服迄今为止遇到的障碍。SCRAP 接收器是一种新型金属接收器技术，旨在将空气流预热至约 800 °C，在燃烧室之前或在级联二级非金属接收器系统之前，能够实现升高的温度。光线追踪分析表明，施加在吸收器组件上的通量取决于定日镜尺寸。开发了一个热力学计算机模型来研究 SCRAP 接收器的吸收器组件（尖峰）的性能特征。该模型针对实验测试设置进行了验证。在各种空气流速下获得了令人满意的一致性。研究了尖峰的热效率并用于近似接收器的太阳能热效率。预计接收器的太阳能热效率将超过 80%。接收器的几何设计实现了相对较低的辐射热损失，预计约为 4-5%。确定了对流热损失的相对较大的脆弱性。发现压力损失相对较低，