Techno-economic analysis of a power generation system consisting of a foil-based concentrating solar collector and an organic Rankine cycle unit
Abstract
Parabolic trough collector based plants, using thermal oil as a heat-transfer fluid, is the most mature technology of the concentrating solar power technologies. Solar power tower system is proposed as a promising alternative to the parabolic trough collector based plants for large-scale applications. Due to the high initial and operational costs, the use of concentrated solar power plant is limited to the regions with high solar radiation and large-scale capacity. Recently, a cost-effective polymer foil-based novel concentrating solar collector system, which uses a focusing plastic film that is adhered to a glass plate, has been proposed. Apart from low installation cost, this system also avails the advantages of two-axis tracking and low operation and maintenance cost. In this paper are presented techno-economic analyses of a parabolic trough collector based plant and a foil-based solar collector powered plant with a capacity of 1 MWe including a conventional two-tank thermal energy storage and an organic Rankine cycle power system. The objective is to identify which is the more appropriate solar field technology for such plant. Four different thermal energy storage capacities (1 h, 3 h, 6h, and 9 h) were considered in the analysis. Optimum solar field areas for each storage capacities were evaluated. The results suggest that the foil-based concentrating solar system can reduce the levelized cost of energy by up to about 40 % compared to parabolic trough collector based plants. Furthermore, the results indicate that hexamethyldisiloxane is the working fluid that achieves the best performance for the foil-based and parabolic trough collector based plants.
Info
Conference Paper, 2019
UN SDG Classification
DK Main Research Area
Science/Technology
