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Concentrated solar power is an alternative renewable energy technology that converts solar energy into electrical energy by using a solar concentrator and a solar receiver. Computational fluid dynamics have been used to numerically design concentrated solar power. This is a powerful numerical analysis approach that is widely used in energy and environmental engineering applications. In this paper, we review previous work on the applications of computational fluid dynamics in the design of concentrated solar power technology. We performed a bibliometric analysis of journal articles relevant to applications to analyze the current trend of utilization of computational fluid dynamics in these technologies. Then, we conducted a comprehensive analysis focused on the design of solar dish technology using computational fluid dynamics. Furthermore, we reviewed in detail the optical modeling of solar concentrators and solar receivers. Of the 83 retrieved publications from Scopus database, 80 were journal articles, and only three were review papers. Among these 80 journal articles, only 54 were relevant to this study, and 23 were relevant to solar dish technology. The documents were analyzed according to their number of citations, journal sources, and keyword evolution and network map. The information presented in this paper is useful to further recognize the contributions of computational fluid dynamics to the development of concentrated solar power, particularly to solar dish technology. In addition, we also discuss the challenges and future research directions to make solar energy a more sustainable source of renewable energy.

The recently concluded 21 st Conference of the Parties (COP21) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed to limit the increase in global temperature to less than 2 o C above pre-industrial levels, with a more aspirational target of 1.5 o C. Achieving these policy goals will require extraordinary input from the scientific community to define anthropogenic emission targets that account for natural biosphere sources and sinks of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), consistent with the climate targets. Asian countries, being densely populated and emerging global economic powers, are key players in defining future emission trajectories. The average fossil emissions from the three regions are estimated to be 2.4, 0.5 and 0.3 petagrammes of carbon per year (PgC yr -1 ) for East, South and Southeast Asia, respectively, and have increased by 67, 58 and 33 percent over the period 2003-2012. Here, we estimate land biosphere CO 2 fluxes using: 1) simulations of terrestrial ecosystem models driven with global and regional atmospheric and climate observations and 2) atmospheric CO 2 inverse models. Based on observations of atmospheric CO 2 and inverse models, we show that on average over the period 2003-2012, the land biosphere (excluding fossil fuel emissions) in the three Asian regions in our study is either a CO 2 sink (0.35 PgC yr -1 in East Asia) or source neutral (South and Southeast Asia). Consistently, our terrestrial ecosystem modelling suggests that the land biosphere of South and Southeast Asia were nearly neutral, but disagrees for East Asia.KEYWORDS Asian CO 2 sources and sinks; atmospheric inversion; terrestrial ecosystem model IntroductionTropical and temperate Asia is home to 3.72 billion people and is undergoing rapid social changes and economic growth. We define the three Asian regions for this study as: East Asia comprising China, Japan,