Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2022
19th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
Feasibility assessment of a TES unit of a CSP plant in Brazil
Submission Author:
Lucas Rodrigues Neumann , MG
Co-Authors:
Lucas Rodrigues Neumann, Igor Marques Alves, Andre Sa Alves Vilela, Elisa Ishitani Melo, Pedro Paiva Brito, Cristiana Brasil Maia
Presenter: Lucas Rodrigues Neumann
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2022.CIT22-0201
Abstract
The recent decades have shown an increase of the world population increasing, as well as an extensive usage of fossil fuels, which contributes to environmental impacts such as greenhouse effect and pollution. A diversification of the world total primary energy supply energy matrix not only contributes for a better solution to control environmental impacts, but also helps on the development of the energy industry. Renewable energy is an alternative to fossil fuels because it is environmentally friendly and inexhaustible. Among the renewable energy sources, solar energy has been emphasized due to its abundance, wide distribution and low carbon emission. Concentrating solar power technologies (CSP) have proven to be a strategic solution due to their ability to store thermal energy in thermal energy store (TES) units. In a CSP plant, a series of mirrors is used to reflect the sunlight into an energy concentrator, which is filled with a fluid used to carry this heat to drive a turbine and produce electricity. The working fluid can be selected among several options, but molten salts allow higher temperatures to be achieved. In this work it is developed a mathematical model of a TES of a CSP plant operating with a solar tower and using a power block to generate power. A heliostat field will reflect the incident solar energy onto a receiver located in the top of the solar tower and the thermal energy will be used to run a turbine in a thermodynamic cycle. The model will be simulated for the city of Januária, Brazil, considering unsteady state conditions for the heliostat field and for the TES. A control system in the TES will provide steady state conditions for the thermodynamic cycle, ensuring a production of 100 MWe. The mathematical model is developed considering an energy balance of a two-tank sensible TES based on molten salts, focusing on the unsteady heat losses of the tanks. It is expected to evaluate the convective and radiative heat transfer coefficients and the temperature drops of the fluids. Furthermore, it is intended to evaluate the feasibility of Januária to the installation of a CSP plant.
Keywords
Thermal Energy, Thermal Storage, Concentrating Solar Plant, concentrated solar power, Thermodynamic Cycle, Solar Power Tower
