A review of solar dish applications: thermal utilization, thermochemistry, polygeneration and multi-energy complementary systems

Solar dish systems (SDS) offer unique advantages in flexible deployment and high-temperature thermal energy output, playing a critical role in diversified solar energy applications, particularly within distributed energy systems. However, technological bottlenecks continue to hinder their maturation, necessitating expanded research and implementation efforts. This review comprehensively evaluates SDS application frameworks, encompassing thermal power generation, direct thermal utilization, thermochemical conversion, and polygeneration/multi-energy complementary systems. Through comparative analysis, novel implementation pathways and research priorities are proposed to address current application barriers and accelerate SDS technology developments. Key findings indicate that direct heat utilization should focus on compact small-scale SDS, emphasizing efficiency optimization, cost competitiveness, and improved user accessibility. Solar dish thermochemical applications represent a promising and rapidly evolving field that aligns effectively with the high-temperature capabilities of SDS for efficient energy conversion. Future research priorities must focus on advancing fundamental understanding of thermochemical reaction kinetics and thermodynamics, targeted reactor designs (primarily addressing nonuniform radiative flux/radiation fluctuations and engineering implementation of compact configurations), advanced thermochemical energy storage media development and corresponding research on their heat/mass transfer, and scenario-specific applications. Strategic deployment should prioritize distributed energy system configurations and off-grid applications, where implementations predominantly rely on polygeneration architectures that capitalize on high-temperature thermal supply from solar dish collectors. To address the challenge of source-load uncertainty, effective solutions include multi-energy complementary/cascaded energy storage integration, advanced regulation strategy development, and rational system planning/design. Artificial intelligence offers significant potential to drive these implementation processes critically, providing transformative opportunities for SDS deployment.