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A nonuniform and high-strength heat flux load would reduce the working efficiency, safety, and in-service life of a cavity receiver. Four types of concave quartz windows, including conical, spherical, sinusoidal, and hyperbolic tangent, were proposed to be used in the cylindrical cavity receiver of a solar dish concentrator system, which can improve the flux uniformity and reduce the peak concentration ratio of the receiver. For each concave quartz window, 36 structural schemes were offered. Based on the Monte Carlo ray-tracing method, the results showed that the nonuniformity coefficient of the receiver was 0.68 and the peak concentration ratio was 1320.21 by using a plane quartz window. At the same time, when the receiver is in the best optical performance, it is the receiver with sinusoidal, conical, spherical, and hyperbolic tangent quartz windows, respectively. The optical efficiency of the receiver with the above four types of quartz windows was basically the same as that of the receiver with the plane quartz window, but their nonuniformity coefficients were reduced to 0.31, 0.35, 0.36, and 0.39, respectively, and the peak concentration ratio was reduced to 806.82, 841.31, 853.23, and 875.89, respectively. Obviously, the concave quartz window was better than the plane quartz window in improving the flux uniformity. Finally, a further study on the sinusoidal quartz window scheme of all of the above optimal parameter schemes showed that when the installation position of the receiver relative to the dish concentrator was changed, the flux uniformity of the receiver could continue to improve. When the surface absorptivity of the receiver was reduced, the optical efficiency would be reduced. For the parabolic dish concentrator with different focal distance, the concave quartz window can also improve the uniformity of the flux distribution of the cylindrical cavity receiver.

The mirror unit installation error of the solar parabolic dish concentrator can adversely affect its optical performance causing optical intercept losses and hot spots on the absorber surface, which in turn affect safety. Thus, minimizing mirror installation error is considered very important. In this paper, a new method for the facet installation measurement and facet alignment of the mirror unit in the dish concentrator is presented. Firstly, a &ldquo, clean&rdquo, facet installation error measurement method using photogrammetry is presented. The photogrammetry measures the spatial coordinates of three feature points to reverse the mirror facet alignment error parameters. Next, two novel methods, a three-rotation alignment method and two-rotation alignment method for aligning the mirror facet are presented and corresponding mathematical models. The advantage of these alignment methods is that the adjustment value and order for each support bolt can be determined before the mirror facet is aligned, which could provide quantitative adjustment information to operator and avoid repeated adjustments. Finally, validity of the installation measurement and facet alignment method was verified by a numerical simulation and an experiment using a metal facet alignment. The presented methods do not rely on the geometry of the reflector mirror and could therefore have extensive uses in applications such solar tower and trough concentrator.