Modelling of parabolic trough direct steam generation solar collectors

Solar electric generation systems (SEGS) currently in operation are based on parabolic trough solar collectors using synthetic oil heat transfer fluid in the collector loop to transfer thermal energy to a Rankine cycle turbine via a heat exchanger. To improve performance and reduce costs direct steam generation in the collector has been proposed. In this paper the efficiency of parabolic trough collectors is determined for operation with synthetic oil (current SEGS plants) and water (future proposal) as the working fluids. The thermal performance of a trough collector using Syltherm 800 oil as the working fluid has been measured at Sandia National Laboratory and is used in this study to develop a model of the thermal losses from the collector. The model is based on absorber wall temperature rather than fluid bulk temperature so it can be used to predict the performance of the collector with any working fluid. The effects of absorber emissivity and internal working fluid convection effects are evaluated. An efficiency equation for trough collectors is developed and used in a simulation model to evaluate the performance of direct steam generation collectors for different radiation conditions and different absorber tube sizes. Phase change in the direct steam generation collector is accounted for by separate analysis of the liquid, boiling and dry steam zones.     

Effect of using nanofluids on efficiency of parabolic trough collectors in solar thermal electric power plants

In this paper, forced convection heat transfer nanofluid flow inside the receiver tube of solar parabolic trough collector is numerically simulated. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are carried out to study the influence of using nanofluid as heat transfer fluid on thermal efficiency of the solar system. The three-dimensional steady, turbulent flow and heat transfer governing equations are solved using Finite Volume Method (FVM) with the SIMPLEC algorithm. The results show that the numerical simulation are in good agreement with the experimental data. Also, the effect of various nanoparticle volume fraction on thermal and hydrodynamic characteristics of the solar parabolic collector is discussed in details. The results indicate that, using of nanofluid instead of base fluid as a working fluid leads to enhanced heat transfer performance. Furthermore, the results reveal that by increasing of the nanoparticle volume fraction, the average Nusselt number increases.     

Heat losses from parabolic trough solar collectors

Parabolic trough solar collector usually consists of a parabolic solar energy concentrator, which reflects solar energy into an absorber. The absorber is a tube, painted with solar radiation absorbing material, located at the focal length of the concentrator, usually covered with a totally or partially vacuumed glass tube to minimize the heat losses. Typically, the concentration ratio ranges from 30 to 80, depending on the radius of the parabolic solar energy concentrator. The working fluid can reach a temperature up to 400°C, depending on the concentration ratio, solar intensity, working fluid flow rate and other parameters. Hence, such collectors are an ideal device for power generation and/or water desalination applications. However, as the length of the collector increases and/or the fluid flow rate decreases, the rate of heat losses increases. The length of the collector may reach a point that heat gain becomes equal to the heat losses; therefore, additional length will be passive. The current work introduces an analysis for the mentioned collector for single and double glass tubes. The main objectives of this work are to understand the thermal performance of the collector and identify the heat losses from the collector. The working fluid, tube and glass temperature's variation along the collector is calculated, and variations of the heat losses along the heated tube are estimated. It should be mentioned that the working fluid may experience a phase change as it flows through the tube. Hence, the heat transfer correlation for each phase is different and depends on the void fraction and flow characteristics. However, as a first approximation, the effect of phase change is neglected. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical study of heat transfer enhancement by unilateral longitudinal vortex generators inside parabolic trough solar receivers

This study presents numerical computation results on turbulent flow and coupled heat transfer enhancement in a novel parabolic trough solar absorber tube, the unilateral milt-longitudinal vortexes enhanced parabolic trough solar receiver (UMLVE-PTR), where longitudinal vortex generators (LVGs) are only located on the side of the absorber tube with concentrated solar radiation (CSR). The novel absorber tube and the corresponding parabolic trough receiver with smooth absorber tube (SAT-PTR) are numerical studied by combining the finite volume method (FVM) and the Monte Carlo ray-trace (MCRT) method for comparison and verification from the viewpoint of field synergy principle (FSP). Then the effects of Reynolds number, heat transfer fluid (HTF) inlet temperature, incident solar radiation and LVG geometric parameters were further examined. It was found that the mechanism of heat transfer enhancement of this novel absorber tube can be explained very well by the field synergy principle, and that the proposed novel UMLVE-PTR has good comprehensive heat transfer performance than that of the SAT-PTR within a wide range of major influence factors of diverse working conditions and geometric parameters.     

Performance of Cylindrical Parabolic Collector with Automated Tracking System

Parabolic solar collector collects the radiant energy emitted from the sun and focuses it at a point. Parabolic trough collectors are the low cost implementation of concentrated solar power technology that focuses incident sun light on to a tube filled with a heat transfer fluid. However, the basic problem with the cylindrical parabolic collector without tracking was the solar collector does not move with the orientation of sun. Development of automatic tracking system for cylindrical parabolic collectors will increase solar collection as well as efficiency of devices. The main aim of this paper is to design, fabricate and analyze the performance of parabolic collector with automated tracking system. The automated tracking mechanism is used to receive the maximum possible energy of solar radiation as it tracks the path of sun. The performance of the parabolic trough collector is experimentally investigated with the water circulated as heat transfer fluid. The collector efficiency will be noted.     

A detailed nonuniform thermal model of a parabolic trough solar receiver with two halves and two inactive ends

In this paper a detailed one dimensional nonuniform thermal model of a parabolic trough solar collector/receiver is presented. The entire receiver is divided into two linear halves and two inactive ends for the nonuniform solar radiation, heat transfers and fluid dynamics. Different solar radiation and heat transfer modes can be taken into consideration for these four different regions respectively. This enables the study of different design parameters, material properties, operating conditions, fluid flow and heat transfer performance for the corresponding regions or the whole receiver. Then the nonuniform model and the corresponding uniform thermal model are validated with known performance of an existing parabolic trough solar collector/receiver. For applications, the uniform thermal model can be used to quickly compute the integral heat transfer performance of the whole PTC system while the nonuniform thermal model can be used to analyze the local nonuniform solar radiation and heat transfer performance characteristics and nonuniform heat transfer enhancements or optimizations. Later, it could also be effectively used with an intelligent optimization, such as the genetic algorithm or the particle swarm optimization, to quickly evaluate and optimize the characteristics and performance of PTCs under series of nonuniform conditions in detail.     

Economic analysis of power generation from parabolic trough solar thermal plants for the Mediterranean region—A case study for the island of Cyprus

In this work a feasibility study is carried out in order to investigate whether the installation of a parabolic trough solar thermal technology for power generation in the Mediterranean region is economically feasible. The case study takes into account the available solar potential for Cyprus, as well as all available data concerning current renewable energy sources policy of the Cyprus Government, including the relevant feed-in tariff. In order to identify the least cost feasible option for the installation of the parabolic trough solar thermal plant a parametric cost–benefit analysis is carried out by varying parameters, such as, parabolic trough solar thermal plant capacity, parabolic trough solar thermal capital investment, operating hours, carbon dioxide emission trading system price, etc. For all above cases the electricity unit cost or benefit before tax, as well as after tax cash flow, net present value, internal rate of return and payback period are calculated. The results indicate that under certain conditions such projects can be profitable.     

Solar thermodynamic plants for cogenerative industrial applications in southern Europe

The paper deals with the preliminary design and optimization of cogenerative solar thermodynamic plants for industrial users. The considered plants are all based on proven parabolic trough technology, but different schemes have been analyzed: from a conventional configuration with indirect steam cycle and a heat transfer fluid such as synthetic oil or molten salts, to a more innovative arrangement with direct steam generation in the solar field. Thermodynamic parameters of the steam cycle have been optimized considering some constraints due to the heat requirements of the user, leading to a preliminary design of the main components of the system and an estimation of costs. Resulting net electric efficiency is about 10% for conventional synthetic oil plant, while 13% for innovative molten salts and DSG.A comparison with conventional solar thermodynamic systems for electricity production and photovoltaic power plants shows the economic and energetic benefits of the cogenerative solution. Cost of electricity for solar plant is cheaper of about 20 €/MWh than conventional solar power application. Moreover, heat recovery allows to achieve a further 50% of CO₂ emission savings compared to reference solar plants for only electricity production.     

Experimental and numerical investigation on solar parabolic trough collector integrated with thermal energy storage unit

Solar parabolic trough collector (PTC) is the best recognized and commercial‐industrial‐scale, high temperature generation technology available today, and studies to assess its performance will add further impetus in improving these systems. The present work deals with numerical and experimental investigations to study the performance of a small‐scale solar PTC integrated with thermal energy storage system. Aperture area of PTC is 7.5 m², and capacity of thermal energy storage is 60 L. Paraffin has been used as phase change material and water as heat transfer fluid, which also acts as sensible heat storage medium. Experiments have been carried out to investigate the effect of mass flow rate on useful heat gain, thermal efficiency and energy collected/stored. A numerical model has been developed for the receiver/heat collecting element (HCE) based on one dimensional heat transfer equations to study temperature distribution, heat fluxes and thermal losses. Partial differential equations (PDE) obtained from mass and energy balance across HCE are discretized for transient conditions and solved for real time solar flux density values and other physical conditions of the present system. Convective and radiative heat transfers occurring in the HCE are also accounted in this study. Performance parameters obtained from this model are compared with experimental results, and it is found that agreement is good within 10% deviations. These deviations could be due to variations in incident solar radiation fed as input to the numerical model. System thermal efficiency is mainly influenced by heat gain and solar flux density whereas thermal loss is significantly influenced by concentrated solar radiation, receiver tube temperature and heat gained by heat transfer fluid. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy performance and numerical optimization of a screw expander–based solar thermal electricity system in a wide range of fluctuating operating conditions

This paper provides fundamental principles to study the thermodynamic performance of a new screw expander–based solar thermal electricity plant. While steam turbines are generally used in direct steam generation solar systems without admitting fluid in two-phase conditions, steam screw expanders, as volumetric machines, can convert thermal to mechanical energy also by expanding liquid-steam mixtures without a decline in efficiency. In effect, steam turbines are not as competitive as screw expanders when the net power is smaller than 2 MW and for low-grade heat sources. The solar electricity generation system proposed in this paper is based on the steam Rankine cycle: Water is used as both working fluid and storage, parabolic trough collectors are used as a thermal source, and screw expanders are used as power machines. Since screw expanders can operate at off-design working conditions in several situations when installed in direct steam generation solar plants, studying expander performance under fluctuating working situations is a crucial issue. The main aim of the present paper is to establish a thermodynamic model to study the energetic benefits of the proposed power system when off-design operating conditions and variable solar radiation occur. This entails, first and foremost, developing overexpansion and underexpansion numerical models to describe the polytropic expansion phase, which considers all the losses affecting performance of the screw expander under real operating conditions. To assess the best operating conditions and maximum efficiency of the whole power system at part-load working conditions under fluctuating solar radiations, parametric optimization is then improved in a wide range of variable working conditions, assuming condensation pressures of water increasing from 0.1 to 1 bar, under an evaporation temperature rising from 170°C to 300°C.     

Investigation of evacuated tube heated by solar trough concentrating system

Two types of solar evacuated tube have been used to measure their heating efficiency and temperature with fluids of water and N₂ respectively with a parabolic trough concentrator. Experiments demonstrate that both evacuated tubes present a good heat transfer with the fluid of water, the heating efficiency is about 70–80%, and the water is easy to boil when liquid rate is less than 0.0046 kg/s. However, the efficiency of solar concentrating system with evacuated tube for heating N₂ gas is less than 40% when the temperature of N₂ gas reaches 320–460 °C. A model for evacuated tube heated by solar trough concentrating system has been built in order to further analyze the characteristics of fluid which flow evacuated tube. It is found that the model agrees with the experiments to within 5.2% accuracy. The characteristics of fluid via evacuated tube heated by solar concentrated system are analyzed under the varying conditions of solar radiation and trough aperture area. This study supports research work on using a solar trough concentrating system to perform ammonia thermo-chemical energy storage for 24 h power generation. The current research work also has application to solar refrigeration.     

槽式太阳能新型腔式吸热器的热性能研究

提出一种适用于抛物槽集热器的新型太阳能腔式吸热器,该装置具有较高的集热效率,同时连接安装和日常运行维护也相对便利。对其建立一套三维传热模型,并搭建采用新型腔式吸热器的抛物槽集热器实验系统,通过实验测试对比吸热器瞬时效率,验证模型的准确性。此外,定量分析不同环境参数与工作参数对新型腔式吸热器热性能的影响,结果表明:集热效率随着法向直接日射辐照度、环境温度的升高而增加,随着环境风速和吸热器入口传热流体温度的升高而降低,而受传热流体质量流量的影响较小。     

Transient performance of direct steam generation solar power plants

Parabolic trough power plants are currently the most commercial systems for electricity generation. In this study, a transient numerical simulation of a solar power plant was developed by using direct steam generation (DSG) technology. In this system, condensate water from a Rankine cycle is pumped directly to solar parabolic trough collectors. The pressurized water is heated and evaporated before being superheated inside the solar collectors and directed back to the steam turbines, where the Rankine cycle is a reheated‐regenerative cycle. The plant performance with saturated steam production is compared with the performance of a superheated plant. A mathematical model of each system component is presented, with the solar power cycle modeled by the TRNSYS‐17 simulation program. Annual transient performance, including plant power and efficiency, is presented for both plants. As expected, the power of the superheated plant outperforms the saturated plant by approximately 45%, whereas the efficiency decreases by approximately 10%. Furthermore, the power of such plants is considerably improved under the weather of Makkah, 22.4°N, and it is approximately 40 MW for both the spring and autumn seasons. The annual generated energy is approximately 8062 MWh. The levelized electricity cost (LEC) was estimated for both the DSG and the corresponding synthetic oil plants. The DSG plant has an approximately 3% higher LEC than a synthetic oil plant with heat storage and an approximately 11.2% lower LEC than an oil plant if the plant has no storage. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conceptual design and techno-economic assessment of integrated solar combined cycle system with DSG technology

Direct steam generation (DSG) in parabolic trough collectors causes an increase to competitiveness of solar thermal power plants (STPP) by substitution of oil with direct steam generation that results in lower investment and operating costs. In this study the integrated solar combined cycle system with DSG technology is introduced and techno-economic assessment of this plant is reported compared with two conventional cases. Three considered cases are: an integrated solar combined cycle system with DSG technology (ISCCS-DSG), a solar electric generating system (SEGS), and an integrated solar combined cycle system with HTF (heat transfer fluid) technology (ISCCS-HTF).This study shows that levelized energy cost (LEC) for the ISCCS-DSG is lower than the two other cases due to reducing O&M costs and also due to increasing the heat to electricity net efficiency of the power plant. Among the three STPPs, SEGS has the lowest CO₂ emissions, but it will operate during daytime only.     

Thermo-environmental investigation of solar parabolic dish-assisted multi-generation plant using different working fluids

The present study investigates the performance of a multi-generation plant by integrating a parabolic dish solar collector to a steam turbine and absorption chiller producing electricity and process heat and cooling. Thermodynamic modeling of the proposed solar dish integrated multi-generation plant is conducted using engineering equation solver to investigate the effect of certain operating parameters on the performance of the integrated system. The performance of the solar integrated plant is evaluated and compared using three different heat transfer fluids, namely, supercritical carbon dioxide, pressurized water, and Therminol-VPI. The useful heat gain by collector is utilized to drive a Rankine cycle to evaluate the network output, rate of process heat, cooling capacity, overall energetic, and exergetic efficiencies as well as coefficient of performance. The results show that water is an efficient working fluid up to a temperature of 550 K, while Therminol-VPI performs better at elevated temperatures (630 K and above). Higher integrated efficiencies are linked with the lower inlet temperature and higher mass flow rates. The integrated system using pressurized water as a heat transfer fluid is capable of producing 1278 and 832 kW of power output and process heat, respectively, from input source of almost 6121 kW indicating overall energy and exergy efficiencies of 34.5% and 37.10%, respectively. Furthermore, multi-generation plant is evaluated to assess the exergy destruction rate and steam boiler is witnessed to have the major contribution of this loss followed by the turbine. The exergo-environmental analysis is carried out to evaluate the impact of the system on its surroundings. Exergo-environmental impact index, impact factor, impact coefficient, and impact improvement are evaluated against increase in the inlet temperature of the collector. The single-effect absorption cycle is observed to have the energetic and exergetic coefficient of performances of 0.86 and 0.422, for sCO₂ operating system, respectively, with a cooling load of 228 kW.     

槽式太阳能电站集热管热性能测试

采用硅碳棒加热技术和热平衡法测试了桑普生产的具有自主知识产权的槽式太阳能电站集热管的热性能。在40～300℃温度范围内,共测试8个工况下集热管热性能。实验结果显示,集热管中低温性能与肖特公司的PTR70相差不大,完全满足中低温槽式太阳能电站和其他太阳能中低温利用领域的应用。红外图像结果表明,玻璃-金属封接温度明显高于玻璃外管温度,对集热管进行理论分析时不能忽略此部分漏热量。实验数据的获得为国内太阳能槽式电站的设计、建设提供了实验参数,为集热管漏热测试相关标准的制定提供了基础。     

Study of thermal characteristics of a heating module with parabolic trough concentrator and linear wedge-like photoelectric receiver

New solar modules intended for typical solar collectors containing semiparabolic trough concentrators and receivers that convert solar energy into thermal energy are considered. Mathematical modeling is carried out to develop an algorithm for estimating the structure of a heating module with the assigned energy parameters according to the laws of geometrical optics, as well as heat and mass transfer. When using such modules, which are based on a parabolic concentrator and a receiver with a system of coolant flow, cogeneration plants can be designed to produce electricity and heat. The mockups developed using this procedure are studied on the corresponding facilities and are tested under in-situ conditions. A solar module with an asymmetric parabolic trough concentrator and a linear wedge-like photoelectric receiver of concentrated radiation with a system of coolant flow provides the maximum power of 386 W at a temperature of 40°C and an efficiency of 60%, and 319 W at 60°C and 49%, respectively. Such modules are proposed for use to design solar collectors with the required performance.     

Thermal enhancement of solar parabolic trough collectors by using nanofluids and converging-diverging absorber tube

Parabolic trough collectors are the most mature technology for utilizing the solar energy in high temperature applications. The objective of this study is the thermal efficiency enhancement of the commercial parabolic collector IST-PTC by increasing the convective heat transfer coefficient between the working fluid and the absorber. There are two main factors which influence on this parameter, the working fluid type and the absorber geometry. For this reason three working fluids are investigated, thermal oil, thermal oil with nanoparticles and pressurized water. Moreover, a dimpled absorber tube with sine geometry is tested because this shape increases the heat transfer surface and increases the turbulence in the flow. The final results show that these two techniques improve the heat transfer coefficient and the thermal efficiency of the collector. More specifically, the use of nanofluids increases the collector efficiency by 4.25% while the geometry improvement increases the efficiency by 4.55%. Furthermore, collector parameters such as the heat loss coefficient, the exergetic efficiency, the pressure losses and the absorber temperature are presented for all the examined cases. The model is designed with Solidworks and is simulated by its flow simulation studio.     

DSG太阳能槽式集热器动态特性

采用数值模拟方法,分析了以水,水蒸气为工质的DSG槽式集热器的动态流动与传热特性.首先建立了管内流体的一维多相流动与传热模型,并利用差分法对该模型进行求解,计算结果与现有文献数据吻合较好.分析了稳态条件下,集热器出口流体工质参数受太阳辐射强度、流体质量流量、人口温度和入口压力的影响规律.在动态分析中,研究了辐射强度变化所导致的出口参数变化特性.从阶跃响应和脉冲响应的分析中得出,虽然热惯性存在,但短期的辐射强度波动对出口温度仍有较大影响,但对出口压力的影响较小.辐射波动将对一次直通DSG系统出口温度产生很大波动.     

A conceptual design of solar boiler

State-of-the-art concepts for solar thermal power systems are based on parabolic trough, tower or parabolic disks either heating molten salts, mineral oil, air or generating steam. We propose in this paper, a conceptual design of a solar boiler. This concept comes from the conventional thermal power plants boiler, with the difference that the heat comes from mirrors that concentrate the solar radiation on wall-type array of solar collectors, instead of coming from fuel flames and hot gases. In our preliminary performance, analysis of this innovative solar boiler applied to electricity production, we have found that overall efficiency of the conversion from direct solar irradiation energy to electricity is above 20%, which is comparable to the value of parabolic trough and central tower technologies. Besides that, the concept seems very robust and could overcome some drawbacks derived from pressure losses, control complexity and material thermo-mechanical stress.