Central Receivers Design in Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Plants: A review

Abstract

Abstract Fossil fuel has been used for electric power generation for many decades, due to CO2 emission and its effect on climatic change, besides its massive effect on human health caused by environmental pollution and the high operation cost. As a result, researches and development studies rose to change this type of energy source to another clean source; a solar thermal power plant is one of the promises options. This paper focused on the significant component studies during the past ten years of central receiver tower (CRT) design in concentrating solar power (CSP) technology to enhance the amount of absorbed heat from the sun. After an introduction to solar thermal power plants concepts, a detailed survey of developing technologies that been done on external central receivers design, the last section contains the novelty of our upcoming study, by designing an external receiver with a variable inclination angles configuration system used in CRT technology and investigate the inclination effect numerically and experimentally on the solar receiver efficiency.