Sandia’s NSTTF to test new particle receiver technology

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Technology Transitions recently awarded $750,000 to Sandia National Laboratories to help test German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) Centrifugal Receiver (The CentRec).

“DLR has tested The CentRec at low power levels, but not the higher levels that the NSTTF can provide,” said Joshua Christian, Test Operations Engineer at the National Solar Thermal Testing Facility (NSTTF). “We can bring The CentRec to our facility, test it in high heat flux conditions and gather performance data that we can take back to industry for advancing the commercialization of solar concentrating power technology.”

The CentRec’s high-temperature potential using particles could one day help to reduce power production costs between 10% and 20%, as well as improve efficiency in storage, the engineer said.

“The ability to heat particles to extremely high temperatures, up to 1000°C, can enable higher efficiency power cycles, which reduces the cost of electricity production,” Christian said.

The planning process to move and assemble The CentRec started this summer (June-July 2020) and testing is expected to start during the second half of 2021.

To learn more about the NSTTF/CentRec project, contact Principal Investigator Henk Laubscher. For more information on concentrating solar power and the NSTTF, visit csp.sandia.gov. Read more about The CentRec at DLR.