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Theory and performance analysis of a new heat engine for concentrating solar power

The objectives of this paper are to introduce a new heat engine and evaluate its performance. The new heat engine uses a gas, such as air, nitrogen, or argon, as the working fluid and extracts thermal energy from a heat source as the energy input. The new heat engine may find extensive applications in renewable energy industries, such as concentrating solar power (CSP). Additionally, the heat engine may be employed to recover energy from exhaust streams of internal combustion engines, gas turbine engines, and various industrial processes. It may also work as a thermal‐to‐mechanical conversion system in a nuclear power plant and function as an external combustion engine in which the heat source is the combustion gas from an external combustion chamber. The heat engine is to mimic the performance of an air‐standard Otto cycle. This is achieved by drastically increasing the time duration of heat acquisition from the heat source in conjunction with the timing of the heat acquisition and a large heat transfer surface area. Performance simulations show that the new heat engine can potentially attain a thermal efficiency above 50% and a power output above 100 kW under open‐cycle operation. Additionally, the heat engine could significantly reduce CSP costs and operate in open cycles, effectively removing the difficulties of dry cooling requirement for CSP applications. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.