Solar Test Facility at Hyderabad to Boost India’s Solar Industry

International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology (DST) have established Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) based test rig facility at Hyderabad. The newly established facility can help the growing solar industry in India to test capability and performance of solar thermal components like solar receiver tubes, heat transfer fluids, concentrating mirrors. It will validate solar thermal components such as solar receiver tubes, heat transfer fluids, concentrating mirrors, and AR coated glass tubes of the CST system in field conditions.

ARCI is working on the development of cost-effective solar receiver tubes, anti-reflective (AR) coated glass covers, nanostructured material-based thermic fluids, and durable reflective mirrors to enhance the performance and cutting down the cost of the solar thermal systems in India.

Apart from the development, the testing and validation of the components in real-field conditions are critical for the deployment of solar thermal technology. In order to cater to this need, ARCI has established a concentrated solar thermal-based single-axis parabolic trough test rig facility sponsored by the Technology Research Centre (TRC) project, DST, Govt. of India.

ARCI’s test rig facility provides the performance of indigenously developed solar thermal components in real-field operating conditions, thus attracting greater interest from the industries. Recently, HPCL R&D, Bangalore, has sanctioned a project to ARCI for validating their indigenously developed heat transfer fluids with the comparison of a world-leading commercial product.