Experimental study of heat transfer in molten salts

Solar energy is one of the fastest growing technologies of our time, with the benefits of reducing the dependence from fossil fuels and produce clean and sustainable energy. The experiment that this report describes is focused on the thermal solar power generation and specifically in the receiver of the tower solar power plants. This present Project has the objective of study the heat transfer inside the tubes of a concentrated solar receiver of tower type with molten salts as heat transfer fluid. Several experiments have been performed in order to have the best possible estimation and this work summarizes the tasks done previous to the start of the experiments as well as the results obtained and the conclusions reached. The working conditions of the experiments simulate the real performance of existing solar thermal power plants referred to the temperature of the salts and its mass flow through the tube. The calculations done during this project have been performed with the help of the software Matlab R2012b while the acquisition of the data corresponds to the software LabVIEW. This report in englobed in a bigger project founded by the government of Spain with the objective of improve the existent receivers of the thermal solar power plants. After obtaining the results a critical comment is performed and the future perspectives are explained. The objectives of this final bachelor project have been achieved with better results than the expected at the beginning, a fact that allows to think positive about obtaining the targets established by the main researchers of the installation in the future.Ingeniería de la Energí