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  • Advanced cyclic accelerated aging testing of solar reflector materials
    Publication . Wette, Johannes; Sutter, Florian; Tu, Mai; Fernández-Garcia, Aránzazu; Buendia, Francisco; Carvalho, Maria João; Cunha Diamantino, Teresa
    ABSTRACT: Lifetime prediction methods for the components of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants have been in the focus of interest of manufacturers and plant developers for the past years. Recently, an accelerated aging standard for solar mirrors was published by the Spanish AENOR committee [1]. This standard allows performing comparative testing but it is not suited to derive meaningful life-time estimations. Firstly, the testing defined in the standard is not aggressive enough to produce significant degradation on most of the materials and secondly, it has been shown that the passing of these tests does not guarantee a high durability during outdoor exposure [2]. These findings have proven the need for the investigation of more realistic procedures. To provoke the mechanisms that are detected during outdoor exposure, a more realistic application of environmental stresses is being investigated. In this work a series of tests is conducted in which several weathering stresses are combined and applied in a cyclic manner. Some of these cycles have shown to correlate better with real outdoor behavior.
  • Detection of corrosion on silvered glass reflectors via image processing
    Publication . Wiesinger, Florian; Baghouil, Sarah; Le Baron, Estelle; Collignon, Romain; Santos, Filipa; Cunha Diamantino, Teresa; Catarino, Isabel; Facão, Jorge; Ferreira, Cristina; Páscoa, Soraia; Sutter, Florian; Fernández-García, Aránzazu; Wette, Johannes
    ABSTRACT: A novel characterization technique based on image analysis is presented, intended to complement state-of-the-art reflectometer measurements. The technique is developed by experts from different laboratories (OPAC, AGC, CEA and LNEG), which subsequently conduct two Round Robin experiments on corroded solar reflectors for validation. Regarding the inter-comparability, it is found that parameters like the corrosion spot density or the penetration maximum on coated edges exhibit an average coefficient of variation of 62.6 % and 54.9 %. Better agreement is found for parameters like the total corroded area and the maximum edge corrosion penetration, with coefficients of variation of 14.3 % and 13.4 %, respectively. The developed methodology is further applied during a 68-month lasting outdoor exposure campaign of two types of solar reflectors at two representative sites, one exhibiting corrosivity class C2 and the other C3. On the commercial coating RL1, a total corroded area of 59 mm2 and 426 mm2 is measured after the outdoor exposure on the C2 and the C3 site, respectively, while on the novel low-lead coated reflector RL3 corresponding values are 280 mm2 and 1308 mm2. This shows the superior quality of the coating RL1 in terms of corrosion resistance. Furthermore, the analysis highlights the importance of proper edge sealing for corrosion protection, since corrosion penetration is increased by a factor between 1.3 and 4.0 if the edges are unprotected. The reflectance decrease after the outdoor exposure is regarded as negligible (0.000 - 0.005), thus not permitting any of the conclusions that are made from the novel image analysis technique.