Engineering Commons^™

Surface Engineering Of Annealed High Entropy Alloys Towards Thermodynamically Stable, Anti-Oxidation, Solar Selective Absorbers, Sheppard R. Somers

ENGS 88 Honors Thesis (AB Students)

Concentrating solar power (CSP) systems require receivers that maintain their physical properties at the high operating temperature and are absorbent. The high entropy alloy Fe28.2Ni18.8Mn32.9Al14.1Cr6 (HEA) investigated in this thesis fills these needs by harnessing the HEA’s oxidation process to create a selective solar absorbing layer that grows at a parabolic rate at CSP operating temperatures. Results of this research demonstrate that annealing processes of HEA can yield over 90% solar thermal efficiency by engineering the surface oxidation to be both physically and optically optimized for absorption.