Efficient Solar Thermal Electricity Unlocked: Sodium Heat Pipes in the Solar Furnace

Heat pipes were evaluated as an approach to distribute concentrated solar process heat in a solar receiver application. The ability of a plain 304 stainless steel (304SS) plate to absorb and distribute concentrated solar thermal irradiation was compared to a thermally enhanced board, outfitted with constant conductance sodium heat pies (CCHP TEB). Temperatures on the 304SS and CCHP TEB were measured using thermocouples and corroborated using an infrared camera. The 304SS plate was found to have a temperature range from 423℃ from minimum to peak, compared to a temperature range of 185℃ for the CCHP TEB. The result confirmed the enhanced capacity of the board enhanced by sodium heat pipes to convey heat across the entire plate relative to the plain plate, which had drastic hot and cold spots. Further, the power input of the solar furnace was calculated using a calorimeter and measured heat fluxes. The required solar power to reach a maximum temperature of 719℃ was 0.93 kW for the 304SS, while 1.57 kW was required for the CCHP TEB to reach a comparable maximum temperature. The broader impacts of this technology are two-fold. First, it can enable higher thermal efficiency in solar-electric power plants by facilitating higher solar receiver temperatures. Second, improved efficiency reduces both the land area and cost required to support the U.S. and greater global electricity demand

Developing Reusable Software Components

This paper presents some of the experiences gathered in the ESSI Process Improvement Experiment SEPIOR. The goal of SEPIOR is the systematic introduction of object-oriented and componentware development methodologies in the application field of computer-aided manufacturing systems. The paper focuses on the adoption of these technologies in the software company SEKAS. At the example of the development of an alarm management component the commercial, technical, and human impacts are analyzed