Assessment of liquid metal technology status and research paths for their use as efficient heat transfer fluids in solar central receiver systems

Pacio, J.; Wetzel, Th.

doi:10.1016/j.solener.2013.03.025

Cited by 190 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…HTF is the most important part in CSP plant beside energy storage media, because it can transfer the heat from the solar field to the power block. Currently, several typical HTFs are used in commercialized CSP plants, including air, water/steam, synthetic oils, organics, and molten salts [24,25]. A good candidate of HTF in CSP should have the following characteristics: low freezing point, good thermal stability, low viscosity, high specific heat capacity, as well as acceptably low chemical corrosion rate, while low cost is another key criterion for industrial applications [26,27].…”

Section: Application Of Molten Salts As Heat Transfer Fluid In Concenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar Thermal‐Driven Desalination Pursuing Products of Pure Water and Salts and Leaving Minimum Impact to Environment

Xu¹,

Li²,

Guo³

2017

Desalination

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Desalination, removal of salt and other minerals from seawater, brackish water, and wastewater, is becoming a promising solution for providing the increasing need of freshwater. It is highly desirable that environmentally friendly renewable energy resources be utilized for water treatment to minimize the consumption of fossil fuels. Given that most desalination systems can directly use thermal energy, concentrated solar thermal energy is very suitable for application to the water treatment. To avoid the potential negative impacts from disposing the concentrates, recovery of important minerals from concentrates to achieve zero discharge is a promising option. The recent technology development on solar thermal energy storages has shown that sea salts are very promising materials for large-scale thermal energy storage. Hence, a full separation of salts and water in desalination process becomes a necessity in advanced water treatment technologies, which should be achieved in an economically feasible way. Literature review and studies about innovative concept of full separation desalination system will be presented in this study. A full separation device integrated with conventional multieffect distillation or multistage flashing water treatment system will be introduced into the system design to enhance the water productivity and thermal efficiency.

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Section: Application Of Molten Salts As Heat Transfer Fluid In Concenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar Thermal‐Driven Desalination Pursuing Products of Pure Water and Salts and Leaving Minimum Impact to Environment

Xu¹,

Li²,

Guo³

2017

Desalination

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“…Some of the known metals such as liquid sodium used as heat transfer medium in nuclear industry have also been proposed to be used as a heat transfer fluid for solar application for high temperatures beyond 550°C [117,118]. Liquid sodium has a fairly low melting point, very high boiling point, very high thermal conductivity and fairly high heat capacity.…”

Section: Molten Metalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Developments in Heat Transfer Fluids Used for Solar Thermal Energy Applications

Srivastva¹,

Malhotra²,

Sc³

2015

J Fundam Renewable Energy Appl

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Solar thermal collectors are emerging as a prime mode of harnessing the solar radiations for generation of alternate energy. Heat transfer fluids (HTFs) are employed for transferring and utilizing the solar heat collected via solar thermal energy collectors. Solar thermal collectors are commonly categorized into low temperature collectors, medium temperature collectors and high temperature collectors. Low temperature solar collectors use phase changing refrigerants and water as heat transfer fluids. Degrading water quality in certain geographic locations and high freezing point is hampering its suitability and hence use of water-glycol mixtures as well as water-based nano fluids are gaining momentum in low temperature solar collector applications. Hydrocarbons like propane, pentane and butane are also used as refrigerants in many cases. HTFs used in medium temperature solar collectors include water, waterglycol mixtures -the emerging "green glycol" i.e., trimethylene glycol and also a whole range of naturally occurring hydrocarbon oils in various compositions such as aromatic oils, naphthenic oils and paraffinic oils in their increasing order of operating temperatures. In some cases, semi-synthetic heat transfer oils have also been reported to be used. HTFs for high temperature solar collectors are a high priority area and extensive investigations and developments are occurring globally. In this category, wide range of molecules starting from water in direct steam generation, air, synthetic hydrocarbon oils, nanofluid compositions, molten salts, molten metals, dense suspension of solid silicon carbide particles etc., are being explored and employed. Among these, synthetic hydrocarbon oils are used as a fluid of choice in majority of high temperature solar collector applications while other HTFs are being used with varying degree of experimental maturity and commercial viability -for maximizing their benefits and minimizing their disadvantages. Present paper reviews the recent developments taking place in the area of heat transfer fluids for harnessing solar thermal energy. Refrigerants/phase changing materials: These are low boiling point but high heat capacity substances used in the solar collectors to transfer heat in applications like solar space cooling and heating, refrigerators, air conditioning, etc [7]. These materials absorb heat from the solar collectors, produce work either by expanding in a turbo-generator of a vapor compression cycle or by dissociating the refrigerant from its absorbent in a vapor absorption cycle [8]. In some of the relatively high temperature applications, higher boiling point refrigerants are used as indirect heat transfer fluids, wherein the heat collected from the solar collectors is transferred to another fluid like water from where the refrigerants pick-up heat to do the required work in the turbo-generators [9,10]. Recent Developments in Heat Transfer

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“…The latest generation nuclear plants utilize some liquid metals for core cooling that have excellent thermal properties; the use of such fluids in CSP technologies is the subject of discussion in the scientific community [5].…”

Section: Eutectic Alloy Of Sodium and Potassiummentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance of Dish-Stirling CSP system with dislocated engine

Kaliakatsos

Cucumo

Ferraro

et al. 2015

Int J Energy Environ Eng

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In this paper, a Dish-Stirling Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) system was examined in which the engine works no longer as a receiver but is displaced away from it. In this arrangement it is necessary to adopt a heat transfer fluid capable of transmitting the useful power from the receiver to the hot spring in the Stirling engine head. Various components of the system need designing and especially the heat exchanger in charge of transferring power to the engine head thanks to the cooling of the fluid. The Dish-Stirling system under study includes a linear piston Stirling engine of 4 kW total rated power (3 kW thermal and 1 kW electric). The minimum temperature for starting of the engine is 190°C, while the maximum is 565°C. There are many innovative aspects of dish Concentrating Solar Power systems with Stirling engine dislocated, for example, the possibility of using an increased number of engines powered by a single greater dish and energy savings in the solar tracking system. The work covers the search for the most suitable fluids for the purpose, risks and benefit evaluation of fluids never used previously in the field of solar concentration. The heat exchanger sizing was carried out examining different geometric configurations. The study was conducted using a computer and setting up thermo-fluid dynamics simulations in the ANSYS 14.5 environment. Finally, the results were tested and validated through a comparison study with empirical correlations found in the literature.

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Assessment of liquid metal technology status and research paths for their use as efficient heat transfer fluids in solar central receiver systems

Cited by 190 publications

References 49 publications

Solar Thermal‐Driven Desalination Pursuing Products of Pure Water and Salts and Leaving Minimum Impact to Environment

Solar Thermal‐Driven Desalination Pursuing Products of Pure Water and Salts and Leaving Minimum Impact to Environment

Recent Developments in Heat Transfer Fluids Used for Solar Thermal Energy Applications

Performance of Dish-Stirling CSP system with dislocated engine

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