(703e) Solar Electricity Generation System With Combined Energy Storage and Steam Generation

Solar steam power plants for electricity generation were
launched commercially in 1984. These plants are known as SEGs projects. The oil
as the heat transfer fluid (HTF) was pumped through solar field to capture
solar energy. However, the oil was unable to maintain the temperature during
off-sun periods. Thermal energy storage (TES) is useful to increase the solar
multiple. Molten salt is usually employed as a stable energy storage medium. Two-tank
and single-tank construction have been employed for parabolic trough-based
solar steam power plants. In our paper, we propose an improved thermal storage
concept aiming at increasing the operation hours and reducing construction
cost. Our design is shown in the figure below(Figure 1,right), which
incorporates the steam evaporator inside the single thermal storage tank. Aspen
HYSYS is used to dynamically simulate the process, analyze the steam generation
efficiency and compare with the single-tank base case(Figure 1, left).

Figure 1 Thermal
storage base case and the improved design process