Development of a High-Flux Solar Simulator for Experimental Testing of High-Temperature Applications

In the last few years, several studies have been carried out on concentrating solar thermal and thermochemical applications. These studies can be further enhanced by means of high-flux solar simulators (HFSS), since they allow the development of experimental tests under controlled irradiance conditions, regardless of sunshine. In this work, a new high-flux solar simulator, capable of reaching levels of irradiance higher than 100 W/cm2 (1000 suns), has been designed, built and characterized. This simulator is composed of 8 ellipsoidal specular reflectors, arranged face-down on a horizontal plane, in order to irradiate from the upper side any system requiring the simulation of concentrated solar radiation; differently from the HFSSs described in the scientific literature, this configuration allows the avoidance of any distortion of fluid-dynamic or convective phenomena within the system under investigation. As a first step, a numerical analysis of the HFSS has been carried out, simulating each real light source (Xe-arc), having a length of 6.5 mm, as a line of 5 sub-sources. Therefore, the HFSS has been built and characterized, measuring a maximum irradiance of 120 W/cm2 and a maximum temperature of 1007 °C; these values will be enough to develop experimental tests on lab-scale thermal and thermochemical solar applications.