compensator and the compensator itself have to coincide in order to reduce tension forces.

This is
necessary especially for the durability of the vacuum in the glass tube.
Furthermore, a getter is integrated into the receiver in order to maintain the vacuum. Especially
hydrogen, which emerges in smaller quantities due to cracking processes in the thermo oil, can
traverse the absorber tube and diminish the vacuum quality. The getter absorbs the hydrogen and
avoids thereby the deterioration of the thermal insulation properties of the receiver.
The receivers have to resist certain pressure. Maximal operating pressures are indicated to be 20 bars
for the Archimede receiver and 40 bars for the Schott receiver. This is important for their use in direct
steam generating power plants where they limit the steam pressure. Other receivers have to be used
(respectively developed) if higher pressures are to be achieved. The Solarlite direct steam generation
power plant projects limit the steam pressure to 30 bars.37 Novatec’s Fresnel power plants PE 1 and PE
2, however, are operated with 55 bars.

3.2.2 Receiver efficiency

The following figure illustrates the energy flows at the receiver. There are optical and thermal losses
that reduce the useable power in comparison to the radiant flux that is projected onto the receiver.

Figure 50: Energy flows at the receiver

Optical losses

Optical losses are produced at the glass tube as well as at the absorber tube. The glass tube has only a
limited transmittance so that a part of the radiation is reflected and another part is absorbed. As already
mentioned, antireflective coatings and highly transparent glass materials reduce the loss to around 4%.
The absorber tube has only a limited absorptance so that another part of the incoming radiation is
reflected at the absorber tube. Selective coatings reduce this loss to around 5%. These optical losses
amount, hence, to

37
See www.solarlite.de.
51
 ,

where is the irradiance on the active receiver surface area .

The foregoing equation relates the losses to the active receiver surface area and not to the total receiver
surface area. This is the case because an additional optical loss has to be taken into account: The
bellows and metal shields at the ends of the receiver reduce the active receiver area by nearly 4%
(Siemens indicates 3.6%). Taking into consideration this additional loss and assuming the mentioned
value, the optical losses over the whole receiver amount to

Thermal losses

Thermal losses are generated by thermal radiation, convection and heat conduction. Heat conduction
and convection between the hot absorber tube and the cooler glass tube are reduced considerably by
the vacuum. Heat conduction can be neglected and will not be mentioned here.
The thermal losses of a receiver depend strongly on the temperature difference between the absorber
tube and the surrounding air. Experiments with the Solel UVAC3 receiver, the forerunner of the actual
Siemens UVAC 2010, showed the following losses at an ambient temperature of 23°C (without wind):
130W/m at 300°C, 200W/m at 350°C, 310W/m at 400°C and 450W/m at 450°C. 38 A function that
approximates these values is:

, (17)

where is the difference between heat fluid temperature and ambient temperature.

Figure 51: Thermal loss at the Solel UVAC3 receiver, measurement points and approximating
function

The combination of a linear dependence on the temperature difference and a dependence on the fourth
power of the temperature difference corresponds to the combination of convective heat loss (linear):

, (18)

38
See Burkholder/Kutscher 2008.
52
where is the heat transfer coefficient and the surface area of the tube,
and radiative heat loss (fourth power):

, (19)

where is the mean emissivity at the temperature T.

Energy balance

Finally, we can establish an energy balance of the complete receiver. One possibility is the following
one:

(20)

useable power
active receiver surface area
irradiance on the receiver
power loss due to reflection on the glass tube
power loss due to reflection on the absorber tube
power loss due to radiant emittance of the glass tube
convective heat loss at the glass tube

In this equation we do not consider the convective and radiative heat loss of the absorber tube, but of
the glass tube.
Another possibility, taking into consideration the convective and radiative heat loss of the absorber
tube and not of the glass tube, would be:

. (21)

power that is absorbed by the glass tube

energy loss due to radiant emittance of the absorber tube
convective heat loss of the absorber tube

The two equations (20) and (21) would render similar values, because the heat losses of the absorber
tube and the heat losses of the glass tube are similar. However, they are not identical because of two
effects:
First, a part of the heat that the glass tube loses, especially the radiative loss, is given back to
-
the absorber tube. However, the radiative heat loss of the glass tube, which does not reach
high temperatures, is quite low so that the heat flow from the glass tube to the absorber tube is
also very low. Additionally, the absorptance of the absorber tube in the infrared spectrum is
very low so that the final effect of the infrared reemission of the glass tube on the absorber
tube is extremely low.
Second, a part of the emitted radiation by the hot absorber tube traverses the glass tube and
-
does not appear in the heat losses of the glass tube. The diagram above illustrated the
transmittance of borosilicate glass (without antireflective coating), which is about 92% in the
visible range, but quite low in the range of 2500nm-9000nm, which is the range of the thermal

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 radiation of a body with 400°C. However, it is not zero so that a part of the thermal radiation
of the absorber tube crosses the glass tube without being absorbed.
An important difference between the heat loss of the absorber tube and the heat loss of the glass tube
is the different contribution of the different heat loss processes: At the absorber tube, the radiative heat
loss is dominant because of the high tube temperature and because of the vacuum that hardly allows
convective or conductive losses (however, as no technically generated vacuum is perfect, there is a rest
especially of convective heat loss that is considered in equation (21)). At the glass tube, on the
contrary, the convective heat loss is more important than the radiative loss. The temperature difference
between the glass tube and the environment is quite small and does not allow high radiative losses, but
the surrounding air moves freely around the glass tube so that the convective heat loss is important.
A quantification of the different heat loss processes and their share in the total heat loss is not possible
without taking into consideration several boundary conditions as, most importantly, temperature
differences, absolute temperatures, wind conditions and air humidity.

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