Performance characteristics of a hybrid solar receiver combustor utilising hydrogen or syngas

The use of hybrid solar thermal devices, which harness the energy from both concentrated solar radiation and combustion, is receiving growing attention due to their potential to provide a firm and dispatchable thermal energy supply while lowering the costs of energy systems and assisting the penetration of renewable energy. The Hybrid Solar Receiver Combustor (HSRC), which directly integrates the function of a solar receiver and a combustor into a single device, is a particularly promising hybrid technology. Its design allows the receiver to operate in three modes: solar-only, combustion-only and a mixed-mode (a combination of both solar and combustion). Compared with the present state-of-the-art in hybrid solar-combustion systems (which collect the thermal energy from the solar and combustion sources in separate devices and then combine them subsequently), the HSRC offers a reduction in total infrastructure (and hence capital costs), heat-exchange surface area, start-up/shut-down losses and pollutant emi...