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ENCIT 2022
19th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
Performance analysis of a solar tower power plant based on the s-CO2 Brayton cycle
Submission Author:
Igor Marques Alves , MG
Co-Authors:
Igor Marques Alves, Lucas Rodrigues Neumann, Andre Sa Alves Vilela, Elisa Ishitani Melo, Pedro Paiva Brito, Cristiana Brasil Maia
Presenter: Lucas Rodrigues Neumann
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2022.CIT22-0186
Abstract
The shift from fossil fuel resources to sustainable energy sources is necessary and has to be done as soon as possible. As the most abundant renewable source of energy, solar energy has been widely explored to generate electric power by using concentrated solar power (CSP) or photovoltaic (PV) technologies. Since the thermal energy of CSP can be stored in thermal energy store (TES) units, the plants are dispatchable, and the power can be generated even after the sunset and on the load demand. Nevertheless, nowadays CSP are not cost-efficient as conventional fossil fuels technologies, requiring efficiency improvements. In this work it is evaluated a CSP composed of tow main blocks: a solar power tower system followed by a supercritical CO2 recompression Brayton cycle. A heliostat field with individual mirrors reflects the solar energy onto a receiver located at the top of a solar tower. It was developed a mathematical model for a 100 MWe plant, located in Januária, Brazil (latitude 15°29'44"S and longitude 44°21'45"W). A heliostat field was defined and the energy absorbed in the receiver was determined using the solar multiple and experimental data from the literature. A computational code developed in Python was developed to simulate the system. The literature suggests that the average direct normal irradiation of Januária is suitable for the installation of a CSP. This work intends to assess the feasibility of a solar plant in this location, based on the required number of heliostats. It is intended to define the relation between the cycle power efficiency and the working fluid entrance temperature and to evaluate if this relation is linear, as observed in previous works. It is also intended to evaluate the behavior of the system without the use of a TES.
Keywords
Solar Power Tower, Thermal Energy Storage, Supercritical CO2, Molten salt, concentrated solar power
