A Method For Analyzing The Energy Profile Of The Concentrated Light Spot From A Dish Solar System

Method for analyzing the energy profile of the concentrated light spot from a dish solar system is one of important research areas, as it can be used to determine conditions suitable for functioning of a concentrated dish Stirling solar energy system. Since system efficiency and safety are directly related to the energy distribution of thermal receiver of the system, it is essential to get real and accurate light spot quality analysis results.After having considered the properties of red, green and blue components of the image processing system in response to energy intensity, we proposed a novel method for analyzing the energy profile of the concentrated light spot. The main contents are as follows:1. Overview existing methods for mirror alignment and technologies for analyzing alignment results in concentrated solar thermal power system. Point out the advantages and disadvantages of the existing methods.2. Collect information on camera’s properties of each color components in responding to linearly scaled light energy(gray card image). Based on the results, the hypothesis that the camera with its ISO number set to 400 is most suitable for analyzing the energy distribution on the system’s thermal receiver is made, as it has a proximately linear relation between luminance and the intensity of blue components.3. Based on the known properties of the power unit(power conversion efficiency), energy distribution of the concentrated light spot from flux-mapping, sun Direct Normal Irradiance(DNI) and output power, a direct comparison between the theoretical estimate and real measurement is made, which is ideal for verifying our results.4. A software that directly implements the proposed technique is then developed. This software takes raw images and presents users essential informations on energy profile as well concentrating efficiency on the heat-head automatically.The results show that the blue component of the image from camera with ISO 400 has the best ability to capture the information of energy distribution on the thermal receiver. This method has several advantages: data is real and reliable. It is also applicable to different cameras and environment with strong engineering feasibility.