Digital design and 3D printing of innovative SiC architectures for high temperature volumetric solar receivers

Abstract

In order to demonstrate that digital material engineering methodology is able to address the design and optimisation of architectured ceramic materials, solar volumetric receivers employed in Solar Thermal Power Plants (STPP) have been studied. A digital design approach for obtaining new receivers, at the macroscopic structural scale, is proposed. This approach couples virtual structure generation, ray tracing and thermal simulations at the scale of the base structural components (microscopic scale). Then, a recently developed process for manufacturing silicon carbide (SiC) parts by binder jetting is used to elaborate three optimised structures which are tested on-sun at high temperature in a solar concentrator reproducing the STPP operation conditions. The results obtained with these structures, having original shapes, are promising: the average experimental outlet air temperature reaches a maximum of 1133 K, energy yields can reach 0.49 despite high experimental heat losses, and all the SiC structures, made with a new material based on 3D printing, withstood the high temperatures reached, up to 1500 K. Comparison between digital and experimental results shows that the approach presented in this paper paves the way to a new digital material engineering approach.

Reliability comparisons between additively manufactured and conventional SiC–Si ceramic composites

“…35 Therefore, the present study applied the binder-jetting AM method, and built on the past studies in the literature that have used this technology for fabricating SiC preform. For example, Heisel et al 36 used a mixture powder of SiC and plaster, and the binder jetting printing technique to print solar receivers. Zocca et al 1 developed a layerwise slurry deposition printing technology that combines deposition of ceramic slurry layers with binder jetting of 2D cross sections to generate a 3D part.…”

“…Therefore, the present study applied the binder‐jetting AM method, and built on the past studies in the literature that have used this technology for fabricating SiC preform. For example, Heisel et al 36 . used a mixture powder of SiC and plaster, and the binder jetting printing technique to print solar receivers.…”

Simulation of the Spectral Conducto-Radiative Exchanges within Semi-Transparent Heterogeneous Media

“…The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) develops a code to evaluate the conductoradiative exchanges within 3D voxelized microstructures [2] [3]. In this program, each voxel represents a unique phase (fluid or solid) and is considered homogeneous and non-scattering.…”

A modified zonal method to solve coupled conduction-radiation physics within highly porous large scale digitized cellular porous materials

“…Generally, designing macroporous media with an optimized ETC involves following steps: material elaboration, testing, and optimization [2,16]. Till date, several methods have been developed to determine coupled conductive-radiative heat transfer while developing the innovative porous materials.…”