Srilakshmi Gopalakrishnan

In Central Receiver Systems (CRSs), thousands of heliostats track the sunrays and reflect beam radiation on to a receiver surface. The size of the reflected image and the extent of reflection from the heliostats are one of the important criteria that need to be taken into account while designing a receiver, since spillage losses may vary from 2 to 16% of the total losses. The present study aims to determine the size of an external cylindrical receiver, such that the rays reflected from all the heliostats in the field are intercepted. 

Solar tower technology has gained considerable momentum over the past decade. In a solar tower plant, a single receiver is used and the power collected by the heliostat field is strongly coupled to the tower height and its location with respect to the field. The literature available focuses largely on the component-level details of the heliostat field, ray-tracing mechanisms, receiver heat transfer analyses, etc.

Solar Tower technology has gained considerable momentum over the past decade .Unlike the parabolic trough, Solar Tower has a lot of variants in terms of type of receivers, working fluids, power cycles, size of heliostats, etc .Most of the literature available on this technology does not address in great depths, details of various parameters associated with tower technology.The role and significance of this technology is brought out in the context of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) in order to achieve grid-connected solar power.

A novel approach to determine the non-dimensional heliostat field boundary for solar tower plants.Solar tower technology has gained considerable momentum over the past decade. In a solar tower plant, the power collected by the heliostat field is strongly coupled to the height of the tower and its location with respect to the field. This paper provides a methodology to fix the boundary of the field (non-dimensionalised with respect to the tower height). 

The study aims to develop a methodology to carry out a technical analysis of a solar tower (ST) technology. The proposed rational approach determines the optimum solar field and the associated tower height for an ST using an external cylindrical receiver, using molten salt as both HTF and storage medium operating with steam Rankine power cycle.