Design, fabrication and test of a high efficiency refractive secondary concentrator for solar applications

Common to many of the space power applications that utilize solar thermal energy such as electric power conversion, thermal propulsion and furnaces, is a need for highly efficient, solar concentration systems. An effort is underway to develop the refractive secondary concentrator, which uses refraction and total internal reflection to efficiently concentrate and direct solar energy. When used in combination with advanced primary concentrators, the refractive secondary concentrator enables very high system concentration ratios (10,000 to 1) and very high temperatures (>2000 K). Presented is an overview of the effort at the NASA Glenn Research Center to evaluate the performance of a prototype single crystal sapphire refractive secondary concentrator and to compare the performance with analytical models. The effort involves the design and fabrication of a secondary concentrator, design and fabrication of a calorimeter and its support hardware, calibration of the calorimeter, testing of the secondary concentrator in NASA Glenn´s Tank 6 solar thermal vacuum facility, and comparing the test results with predictions. Test results indicate an average throughput efficiency of 87%. It is anticipated that reduction of a known reflection loss with an antireflective coating would result in a secondary concentrator throughput efficiency of approximately 93%