Solar Tests of Aperture Plate Materials for Solar Thermal Dish Collectors

If a malfunction occurs in a solar thermal point-focus distributed receiver power plant while a concentrator is pointed at the Sun, motion of the concentrator may stop. As the Sun moves relative to the Earth, the spot of concentrated sunlight then slowly walks off the receiver aperture, across the receiver face plate, and perhaps across adjacent portions of the concentrator. Intense local heating by the concentrated sunlight may damage or destroy these parts. The behavior of various materials under conditions simulating walk-off of a parabolic dish solar collector were evaluated. Each test consisted of exposure to concentrated sunlight at a peak flux density of about 7000 kW/square meter for 15 minutes. Types of materials tested included graphite, silicon carbide, silica, various silicates, alumina, zirconia, aluminum, copper, steel, and polytetrafluoroethylene. The only material that neither cracked nor melted was grade G-90 graphite. Grade CS graphite, a lower cost commercial grade, cracked half-way across, but did not fall apart. Both of these grades are medium-grain extruded graphites. A graphite cloth (graphitized polyacrylonitrile) showed fair performance when tested as a single thin ply; it might be useful as a multi-ply assembly. High purity slipcast silica showed some promise also.