ORCID Profile
0000-0003-2800-9886
Current Organisations
University of Western Australia
,
The Cyprus Institute
,
German Aerospace Center
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2018
Publisher: ASME International
Date: 15-06-2021
DOI: 10.1115/1.4051315
Abstract: This article presents an innovative approach for optimizing the dimensions of cylindrical receivers for solar tower systems. In this approach, a single set of rays, representative of a complete annual ray-tracing simulation of the solar tower system, is used and processed to evaluate numerous receiver designs simultaneously and to select the optimum. The simultaneous evaluation of receiver designs is achieved by exploiting the geometrical properties of the intersection between a ray and a cylinder, which allows estimating the annual energy intercepted by receivers of different heights without the need for processing the annual set of rays more than one time. Once the annual intercepted energy is known for each receiver, the application of a costing function estimating the receiver cost as a function of its surface area allows to estimate their cost and, therefore, to select the receiver dimensions that will yield a minimum surface area for a given annual energy interception factor. The overall workflow to carry out the mentioned receiver optimization approach has been implemented by adapting several open-source tools that The Cyprus Institute (CyI) is developing in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU) to assist in the modeling, analysis, design, and optimization of concentrated solar thermal (CST) systems. This article also presents a detailed overview of the overall simulation workflow as well as a case study demonstrating the capabilities of the approach.
Publisher: American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Date: 24-06-2018
DOI: 10.1115/ES2018-7415
Abstract: The light collection and concentration subsystem (LCCS) of any concentrating solar thermal (CST) system is composed of the surfaces that collect and concentrate the sunlight and of the input surfaces of the receivers, or receivers’ envelopes, where the light is concentrated. For all commercial CST technologies the LCCS is, together with the power block, the subsystem that has more influence in the overall performance and cost. Thus, its optimization is critical to increase the cost-competitiveness of these systems. This optimization requires, in many cases, the optimization of the position, geometry and size of a very large number of solar collecting and concentrating surfaces as well as the optimization of the shape and size of the input surfaces of the receivers where the sunlight is concentrated. Because a full optimization requires the exploration of a configuration space with a very large number of dimensions, the traditional approach consist in making many initial assumptions to drastically reduce the number of dimensions of the configuration space to a handful, so that the optimization can be carried out using conventional high-end workstations in a matter of hours. However, to achieve relevant breakthroughs and to substantially increase the cost-competitiveness of CST systems a bolder approach is needed, where sophisticated design and analysis tools, engineered from the start to be used in High Performance Computers (HPC), will be combined with sophisticated optimization strategies targeted to explore and find optimal solutions in very high dimensional configuration spaces. This paper presents the first of a series of such design and analysis tools. The tool, call Flux Tracer, partitions the three-dimensional space in which the LCC subsystem under analysis is immersed into volumetric pixels (voxels) and computes the radiant energy flux that traverses each voxel as a function of time. It integrates the energy density in every voxel overtime, providing detailed information regarding how the radiant energy flows in space in a given LCC subsystem and in a given period of time. This information is the cornerstone of the highly sophisticated computational LCC subsystem optimization framework The Cyprus Institute (CYI) is developing, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), targeted to be used in HPC’s.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2022
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2015
Publisher: Author(s)
Date: 2017
DOI: 10.1063/1.4984525
Publisher: Author(s)
Date: 2016
DOI: 10.1063/1.4949029
Publisher: AIP Publishing
Date: 2019
DOI: 10.1063/1.5117528
Publisher: Elsevier
Date: 2017
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2020
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2015
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2015
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2019
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2017
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2023
Publisher: AIP Publishing
Date: 2020
DOI: 10.1063/5.0028528
Publisher: Author(s)
Date: 2018
DOI: 10.1063/1.5067044
Publisher: Author(s)
Date: 2018
DOI: 10.1063/1.5067165
Publisher: Author(s)
Date: 2018
DOI: 10.1063/1.5067222
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2001
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2012
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2020
Publisher: ASMEDC
Date: 2005
Abstract: The Tonatiuh project is underway at the University of Texas at Brownsville under the DOE-NREL Minority University Research Associate (MURA) Program Subcontract. It intends to improve the cost-effectiveness of solar energy technologies by advancing the state-of-the-art of the simulation tools available for the design and analysis of solar concentrating systems. The project includes the design, development, implementation, verification and validation of Tonatiuh: an open-source advanced object-oriented program, that using distributed computing, Monte-Carlo Ray tracing, and the best 3-D user interface technologies available today, will provide a sophisticated and efficient software environment for the design and analysis of solar concentrating systems. This paper presents an overview of the Tonatiuh Software Development Project, emphasizing the software design aspects of the project, and the scientific relevance of the program.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2004
Publisher: Author(s)
Date: 2016
DOI: 10.1063/1.4949032
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 22-07-2021
DOI: 10.3390/EN14154412
Abstract: Integrals that are of interest in the analysis, design, and optimization of concentrating solar thermal systems (CST), such as the annual optical efficiency of the light collection and concentration (LCC) subsystem, can be accurately computed or estimated in two distinct ways: on the time domain and on the spatial domain. This article explores these two ways, using a case study that is highly representative of the commercial CST systems being deployed worldwide. In the time domain, the computation of these integrals are explored using 1-min, 10-min, and 1-h solar DNI input data and using The Cyprus Institute (CyI)’s High-Performance Computing (HPC) system and an open-source ray tracer, Tonatiuh++, being actively developed at CyI. In the spatial domain, the computation of these integrals is explored using SunPATH, another open-source software tool being actively developed at CyI, in tandem with Tonatiuh++. The comparison between the time and spatial domain approach clearly indicate that the spatial domain approach using SunPATH is dramatically more computationally efficient than the time domain approach. According to the results obtained, at least for the case study analyzed in this article, to compute the annual energy delivered by the LCC subsystem with a relative error less than 0.1%, it is enough to provide SunPATH with 1-h DNI data as input, request from SunPATH the sun position and weights of just 30 points in the celestial sphere, and run Tonatiuh++ to simulate these 30 points using 15 million rays per run. As the test case is highly representative, it is expected that this approach will yield similar results for most CST systems of interest.
Publisher: MIT Press
Date: 2023
DOI: 10.1162/LEON_A_02402
Abstract: Bricolage is a kinetic biological artwork first exhibited at the Perth International Arts Festival in 2020. The artists used stem cell technologies to create bioengineered living entities from donated human heart muscle cells. These living entities are suspended in an incubator from the ceiling and are made visible to gallerygoers, who watch the performance of cells generating and moving independently. This paper considers how the assemblage, animation, and performance of cells embedded in Bricolage highlight questions around the conceptualizations and perceptions of life, duration, animation, and aliveness.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2021
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2022
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2015
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2022
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2016
Publisher: ASME International
Date: 08-01-2019
DOI: 10.1115/1.4042127
Abstract: This paper presents FluxTracer, an advanced open source computer tool to assist in the analysis, design, and optimization of solar concentrators and receivers. FluxTracer is a postprocessor for Monte Carlo ray tracers used to simulate the optical behavior of solar concentrating systems. By postprocessing the rays generated by the ray tracer, FluxTracer can partition into volumetric pixels (voxels) a region of interest in three-dimensional (3D) space defined by the user and compute for each voxel the radiant power density of the concentrated solar radiation. Depending upon the set of rays provided by the ray tracer, it may be able to integrate the radiant power density in every voxel over time. The radiant energy density analysis described is just one of the analyses that FluxTracer can carry out on the set of rays generated by the ray tracer. This paper presents the main analyses that FluxTracer can provide. It also presents ex les of how the information provided by FluxTracer can be used to assist in the analysis, design, and optimization of solar concentrators and receivers. FluxTracer is the first of a series of components of an open-source computational framework for the analysis, design, and optimization of solar concentrators and receiver, being developed by The Cyprus Institute (CyI) and the Australian National University (ANU).
Publisher: MDPI
Date: 22-07-2019
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2020
Publisher: EDP Sciences
Date: 03-1999
DOI: 10.1051/JP4:1999328
Publisher: AIP Publishing
Date: 2019
DOI: 10.1063/1.5117672
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2014
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2021
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2020
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 1999
Location: United States of America
Location: United States of America
Location: Spain
Location: Spain
Start Date: 2013
End Date: 2016
Funder: Australian Renewable Energy Agency
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2019
End Date: 2025
Funder: European Commission
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2016
End Date: 2020
Funder: European Commission
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2012
End Date: 2015
Funder: European Commission
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2010
End Date: 2011
Funder: Instituto para la Diversificación y el Ahorro de la Energía
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 1996
End Date: 1997
Funder: European Commission
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 1997
End Date: 1998
Funder: European Commission
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 1986
End Date: 1988
Funder: Council for International Exchange of Scholars
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 1995
End Date: 1995
Funder: European Commission
View Funded Activity