Inspection Receiver Tubes Device for CSP Plants. (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jalón, A. García de; Pérez, D.; Benito, P.; Zaversky, F.
• Is Part Of: Energy procedia. Volume 69(2015)
• Page Start: 1868
• Page End: 1876
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: Glass surface -- receiver tubes -- thermal camera -- inspection; Power resources -- Congresses; Power resources -- Periodicals; Power resources; Conference proceedings; Periodicals; 333.7905
• DOI: 10.1016/j.egypro.2015.03.168
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1876-6102

Abstract

Abstract: The National Renewable Energy Centre (CENER) has developed an inspection system called ITR (Inspection Receiver Tubes) to measure the glass surface temperature of receiver tubes in thermal solar plants. This development has been performed in order to facilitate performing maintenance operations on the surveillance state of receiver tubes and its degradation over time due mainly to the vacuum losses inside the tubes. The inspection system ITR performs measurements of the glass surface temperature of the receiver tubes on a moving vehicle in a fast thermography process. Software has been developed to calculate the temperature of each glass tube from videos of IR thermography images. Depending on the temperature measurement value, the software classifies tubes in three different states corresponding to three colours: green (ok), orange (regular) and red (Not ok). In this paper, a validation study has been performed regarding glass temperatures measured at ENEA Soltherm loop facilities composed of two parabolic trough collectors of 12 receiver tubes each. The comparative study was carried out by measuring manually the glass temperature of some representative receiver tubes and by comparing the results obtained after having measured the same receiver tubes with the inspection system ITR.