Experimental Study on Vacuum Performance of Parabolic Trough Receivers based on a Novel Non-destructive Testing Method

Abstract

The loss of vacuum in the parabolic trough receivers is one of the most common problems in the parabolic trough solar power plants. The vacuum level and gas species in the annulus of the receiver determine the heat loss and have an important influence on the thermal efficient of the solar system. If hydrogen is inside the annulus, it can cause heat losses to be almost four times that of a receiver with good vacuum. However, it is hard to non-destructively measure the gas species and partial pressure in the annulus of the receiver. In this paper, a novel non-destructive method was presented to evaluate the vacuum performance by using combined dielectric barrier discharge and the spectral analysis technology. The discharge characteristics and spectrometric properties of four kinds of gases, which are the most likely gases to be found in the receivers, were studied in the experiments. The test results of the non-destructive vacuum evaluation method agree well with the results of the residual gas analysis. The feasibility and accuracy of the non-destructive test method was verified. The relationship between the vacuum performance of receiver and the spectral characteristics of dielectric barrier discharge were obtained by a series of experiments.