Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications
Open Access
ISSN: 2090-4541
+44 1300 500008
ISSN: 2090-4541
+44 1300 500008
Reine Reoyo-Prats, Olivier Faugeroux and Bernard Claudet
Promes, France
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Fundam Renewable Energy Appl
Concentrated solar power plants are a promising solution to limit the dependency of some countries to fossil fuels
or nuclear energy. These plants, located in sunny regions, are exposed to extreme climatic conditions. Moreover,
they are supposed to work during 25 years. So, it is necessary to ensure the durability of the different components.
In particular, high solar absorptance receivers are a key element in a CSP plant project, because they receive the
concentrated sun arrays, and are submitted to important thermal shocks. In this presentation, different receiver
materials are studied: four alloy substrates combined with four new absorber coatings, operable in solar towers with
molten salts or steam as heat transfer fluids, and a classic Pyromark® paint considered as a reference. In order to test
the durability of the coatings, 200 solar accelerated aging cycles were applied on the samples, using a concentrated
solar facility (named SAAF). The cycles were defined so as to apply realistic high solar flux and temperature on the
front side of the samples, with high cooling and heating rates reproducing the fast variation of solar irradiation due
to cloudy weather and subsequent thermal shocks. The optical characteristics of the coatings were measured at the
beginning and at regular intervals during the aging procedure. Different behaviors of the coatings were observed
depending on the substrate, before any aging cycle. After this first aging campaign, some evolutions were observed
on the solar absorptance or thermal emittance, depending on the substrate and the coating. Nevertheless, the
degradations noticed are not significant enough to conclude about the durability of the coatings.
Recent Publications:
1. A Boubault, B Claudet, O Faugeroux and G Olalde (2014) Aging of solar absorber materials under highly
concentrated solar fluxes. Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells. 123: 211-219.
2. A Boubault, B Claudet, O Faugeroux, G Olalde and J J Serra (2012) A numerical thermal approach to study the
accelerated aging of a solar absorber material. Sol. Energy 86(11):3153-3167.
3. A Boubault K C Ho, A Hall, T N Lambert and A Ambrosini (2017) Durability of solar absorber coatings and
their cost-effectiveness. Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells. 166:176-184
Reine Reoyo-Prats is pursuing her PhD. She is working on aging and the characterization of materials intended to be used as solar receiver in high concentrated solar power plants. She works cooperatively with others laboratories and partners in Europe and south of Mediterranean.