The facility can help the solar industry test capability and performance of solar thermal components like solar receiver tubes, heat transfer fluids, and concentrating mirrors
The International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), has set up a concentrated solar thermal (CST) based test rig facility in Hyderabad.
The facility can help the solar industry test capability and performance of solar thermal components like solar receiver tubes, heat transfer fluids, and concentrating mirrors.
The testing facility will validate solar thermal components such as solar receiver tubes, heat transfer fluids, concentrating mirrors, and AR coated glass tubes, etc. of the CST system in field conditions. It will also validate indigenous components by assessing their performance at varying operating parameters such as flow rates of heat transfer fluids (HTFs), operating temperature and pressure, among others and different DNI (direct normal irradiance) conditions.
The CST facility is sponsored by the Technology Research Centre (TRC) project. It has the capability for simultaneous testing of standard and indigenous solar receiver tubes to operate between 50-350°C temperature range, can conduct heat gain studies in real-field conditions and has electrical heater support for measuring the actual heat loss of solar receivers at different operating temperatures.
“The development of solar thermal technologies for low and medium-temperature applications requires much attention of indigenous solar thermal components manufacturing facilities and cost-effective engineering designs because most of the solar thermal companies import solar thermal components, particularly from China and Europe,” the ministry said in a statement.
In this regard, ARCI is working on the development of cost-effective solar receiver tubes, anti-reflective (AR) coated glass covers, nanostructured material-based thermic fluids, and durable reflective mirrors to enhance the performance and cutting down the cost of the solar thermal systems in India.
