Image Analysis of Particle Flow in Centrifugal Solar Particle Receiver

Particle solar receivers promise economical and operational advantages compared to the molten salt based solar receivers. In this study, an experiment is designed to observe the particle flow characteristics in the Centrifugal Solar Particle Receiver. A set of experiments for various receiver rotation speeds and particle mass flow rates is conducted, and experimentally obtained raw results are post-processed by means of an Image Processing Routine based on 4BestEstimate algorithm[1]. The axial advance of the particles in 1 turn, the particle film thickness and the ratio of the stationary zone to the receiver circumference are measured in order to be later used in the validation study of the Discrete Element Method based numerical model.