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A solar-driven thermochemical pilot plant for the high-temperature thermal dissociation of ZnO has been designed, fabricated, and experimentally demonstrated. Tests were conducted at the large-scale solar concentrating facility of PROMES-CNRS by subjecting the solar reactor to concentrated radiative fluxes of up to 4477 suns and peak solar radiative power input of 140 kWth. The solar reactor was operated at temperatures up to 1936 K, yielding a Zn molar fraction of the condensed products in the range 12–49% that was largely dependent on the flow rate of Ar injected to quench the evolving gaseous products.

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In this paper, we investigate the problem of controlling a seasonal thermal energy storage (STES). The STES considered here is a large scale tank of heated water installed in a building and connected to a solar panel. The stored energy in the STES can be used for providing the building with the space heating (SP) and the domestic hot water (DHW). In order to utilize the STES efficiently, we design a suitable model predictive control (MPC) scheme. In this regard, we develop an appropriate model for the system with an emphasis on the computational tractability of problem. Toward this end, we introduce a bilinear model with analytical linearization. Subsequently, we solve the optimization problem using a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) framework in a reasonable computational time. For controlling the system, in addition to solving the corresponding optimization problem, the main challenge is incorporating seasonal features in the MPC. This issue is resolved by augmenting the cost function with an additional term which is defined based on the exergy of system. Moreover, we address the challenging question of deriving minimal achievable size of the STES tank while satisfying user demand of DHW and SP. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed method is verified numerically.