Near-term improvements in parabolic troughs:  an economic and performance assessment

Gee, Randy; Murphy, L. M.

doi:10.2172/6238994

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The thermal losses that occur overnight are roughly equivalent to the energy that the plant would have generated over 3/4th s of an hour. This is equivalent to the energy required to reheat the HTF (Gee and Murphy, 1981). Assuming that the plant was not operational for 15 h overnight, we can roughly say that for every one hour of non-operation, the electrical energy, which would have to be used to make up the losses, is roughly equivalent to the energy that the plant would have produced for 1/20 h. In the above case, the loss factor is 0.05 and the same is considered in our analysis.…”

Section: Thermal Losses Associated During Plant Shut Down Periodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methodology for sizing the solar field for parabolic trough technology with thermal storage and hybridization

et al. 2014

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A detailed methodology to design the size of solar field for a parabolic trough plant is not explicitly available in open literature, particularly if thermal storage and hybridization are also considered, as most of the papers present a gross overview. This paper gives a procedure to determine the annual electricity generated for a parabolic trough based solar plant of a given rated capacity (1-50 MWe), at a chosen location & given hourly annual solar input, specified hours of thermal energy storage using a two-tank molten salt system and specified fraction of hybridization using natural gas. In this methodology losses due to shut down or cloud cover are also covered. The size of the solar field is optimized for the maximum annual solar to electric conversion efficiency using the concept of solar multiple (ratio of actual aperture area to the reference aperture area needed to get rated power output at maximum solar input). This procedure is validated with the existing parabolic trough plants (Solar Energy Generating Systems VI and Solana Generating Station) and it was found that the annual electrical energy generated by the plant matches reasonably well.Jodhpur, in India, was considered as a location for the case study and the results are presented to understand the influence of thermal storage and hybridization for a given capacity of the plant. The results for various combinations of thermal storage hours and fraction of hybridization used with respect to plant capacity, solar multiple, annual plant efficiency etc. have been discussed in detail. It is observed from the results that, under design conditions, the reference aperture area per MW decreases as plant capacity increases and reaches a limiting value asymptotically at a capacity of 50 MW. The optimized size of the solar field, with respect to annual efficiency, is found to be 1.4 and 2.3 times the size under design conditions for zero and six hours thermal storage respectively. The benefit of hybridization is high for lower solar multiples.

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Section: Thermal Losses Associated During Plant Shut Down Periodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methodology for sizing the solar field for parabolic trough technology with thermal storage and hybridization

et al. 2014

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“…The performance of the PTSC is enriched with the better basic geometrical and design aspects of the solar collectors, which include aperture area, focal length, concentration ratio absorber diameter, rim angle, and optical parameters. Gee et al (1981) 2012) used Aluminum nano-particle waterbased in ṗarabolic trough solar collector (PTSC). The result of nano-fluid based solar parabolic concentrator performance and efficiency was 5-10% higher than the flat plate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative Assessment of the Effect of Thermo-Physical Properties on the Performance of Parabolic Trough Solar Collector

Emmanuel Olayimika,

Benjamin Aina

2020

JASIC

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The harmful effects of fossil fuels on the environment and continuous growth in the energy demand across the world due to the prosperous population have made it essential to harness renewable energy through different technologies. The heat transfer fluids used in solar thermal systems are fundamental to enhance the higher effectiveness of solar thermal systems. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the influence of the thermo-physical properties of CuO, Al2O3, and TiO2 waterbased nanofluids on the thermal performance of the Parabolic Trough Solar Concentrator, PTSC. The energy governing equations of nanofluids, coupled with the concentrator’s effectiveness equations were solved using iterative relaxation approach. C++ program is developed to examine the impact of the thermal characteristics of the three water-based nanofluids on the heat distribution and performance of the concentrator with varying sizes of nanoparticle in the range 1% ≤ φ ≤ 10% at 0.2 kg/s mass flow rate value. The results reveal that the heat transfer coefficient is expanding by 20%, 21%, and 14%, and thermal efficiencies are diminishing by 9%, 56% and 33% using TiO2, CuO and Al2O3 respectively, with the density increase by 28 %, the thermal conductivity increase by 23 %, and the specific heat capacity reduce by 30 %. The influence of the thermophysical properties of the water-based nanofluids on the heat transfer coefficient and the efficiency of the PTSC are significant. This work indicates that the suspended nanoparticles significantly change the thermal characteristics of the suspension which determines its applications

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Parabolic trough concentrators—design, construction and evaluation

Thomas

Guven

1993

Energy Conversion and Management

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Near-term improvements in parabolic troughs: an economic and performance assessment

Abstract: LIST OF FIGURES (concluded) 3-13 Increases in Rate of Return Versus Baseline Internal Rate of Return for 70% Equity.

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

Methodology for sizing the solar field for parabolic trough technology with thermal storage and hybridization

Methodology for sizing the solar field for parabolic trough technology with thermal storage and hybridization

Comparative Assessment of the Effect of Thermo-Physical Properties on the Performance of Parabolic Trough Solar Collector

Parabolic trough concentrators—design, construction and evaluation

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