Dynamic Simulation and Optimization of an Experimental Micro-CSP Power Plant

Small scale solar thermal systems are increasingly investigated in the context of decentralized energy supply, due to favorable costs of thermal energy storage (TES) in comparison with battery storage for otherwise economical PV generation. The present study provides the computational framework and results of a one year simulation of a low-cost pilot 3kWel micro-Concentrated Solar Power (micro-CSP) plant with TES. The modeling approach is based on a dynamic representation of the solar thermal loop and a steady state model of the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC), and is validated to experimental data from a test site (Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida). The simulation results predict an annual net electricity generation of 4.08 MWh/a. Based on the simulation, optimization studies focusing on the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) converter of the system are presented, including a control strategy allowing for a variable pinch point in the condenser that offers an annual improvement of 14.0% in comparison to a constant condensation pinch point. Absolute electricity output is increased to 4.65 MWh/a. Improvements are due to better matching to expander performance and lower condenser fan power because of higher pinch points. A method, incorporating this control strategy, is developed to economically optimize the ORC components. The process allows for optimization of the ORC subsystem in an arbitrary environment, e.g. as part of a micro-grid to minimize Levelized electricity costs (LEC). The air-cooled condenser is identified as the driving component for the ORC optimization as its influence on overall costs and performance is of major significance. Application of the optimization process to various locations in Africa illustrates economic benefits of the system in comparison to diesel generation.

Optimum Heating Pattern of a Ground Source Heat Reference Map

A ground source heat reference map (GSHRM) shows the minimum necessary thermal performance of the ground heat exchanger (GHE) of a ground source heat pump (GSHP) system. Thermal performance depends on thermal properties of the ground, the ground temperature profile, heat advection by groundwater flow, and the GHE operating pattern. This study modeled optimum heating and cooling modes for a GSHRM. First, continuous and intermittent operation modes were compared, and a standard operation time was defined. In a standard household GSHP system, the quantity of heat transferred from the ground depends on household energy demand, which is relatively constant. Once the demand is known, an operation mode is selected that can meet it. Continuous operation increased the total amount of heat exchanged over a period of time but lowered the heat flux at the GHE, whereas intermittent operation with relatively long stopped periods decreased the total amount of heat but did not greatly decrease the heat flux at the GHE. Second, energy-saving efficiency and cost factors were compared among intermittent operation modes. Operation costs consist of the electrical energy supplied to the heat and circulation pumps. At a given operation time, the energy supplied to the heat pump depends on its coefficient of performance (COP), whereas that supplied to the circulation pump depends on its pressure loss, hence on the GHE length. A long GHE has a higher initial cost. Thus, the optimum heating pattern must consider the configuration of the GSHP system, including energy-saving efficiency and cost factors.

Analysis of Heavy Organic Fluids Dispersion Inside Industrial Buildings Hosting Turbomachinery Test Facilities

The use of heavy fluids (typically refrigerants) for tests on turbomachinery equipment, like centrifugal compressors, under similitude with real working conditions is a common practice in the test facilities of manufacturers. This practice leads to the release of the test gas to the environment, mainly coming from seals, test circuit connections, valve gaskets and from operations of circuit assembling/disassembling necessary to replace or service the machine under test. The spatial distribution and flow of these emissions inside the test building is a complex issue, which depends on the specific circuit features, location of sources, geometry and openings of the building and variable climatic conditions of the location. For a preliminary assessment of the health and safety conditions, a NIST computational package — including a CFD solver — was applied. The aim was to validate the applicability and reliability of this tool, which was developed for other types of buildings; from the industrial side, knowledge of the diffusion scenario is important to define test protocols to guarantee acceptable emissions levels for manpower in working areas. The industrial building is organized in multiple inside workspaces. The concentration of the contaminant in the area of the test benches, determined by the internal fluid dynamics, is calculated with the CFD solver included in the NIST package. In the building, air motion is only affected by natural ventilation. For this reason, the interactions between the outside and the interior climatic and microclimatic parameters must be considered, taking into account also the different possible assumptions about the daily management of the openings of the building envelope. Several cases of release and dispersion of heavy fluid inside the working areas, under different boundary conditions, were considered. The sensitivity of the results to the different seasonal conditions was assessed and discussed. The complex internal geometry of the building was simulated by a combination of single zone models. The results showed an expectable presence of test gas emissions in the neighborhood of the test area and the possibility of buoyancy effects within the large building. A relatively stable concentration of the test gas emissions resulted from the application of the model, which was affected only by substantial variations of the climatic conditions.

Performance of a Multi-Cell MgCl2/NH3 Thermo-Chemical Battery During Recharge and Operation

The development of thermal energy storage technologies to match sustainable energy production is of interest. A prototype of a multi-cell thermochemical battery consisting of connected cells containing MgCl2 salt, and additional air-cooled or air-heated cells containing liquid ammonia of varying quality, was constructed and tested. Each of the 17 cells contained thermocouple probes at three different axial locations within the cylindrical cells. Heat transfer rates, pressures, and ammonia condensation and vaporization rates were measured. Three tests were run. In the first test, the hot bed containing 10 cells was heated using cartridge heaters, driving vaporous ammonia from the salt phase once sufficient salt temperatures were reached. The evolved gaseous ammonia was condensed in an additional 7 empty air-cooled cells. Once the recharging cycle was complete, a valve in the ammonia vapor line connecting the cold and hot beds was closed, allowing indefinite storage of cooling or heating capacity. The second operational test involved the opening of the valve while simultaneous air-cooling the hot bed cells and air-heating the cold bed cells. Heating rates and cooling rates to/from air forced through the hot bed and cold bed, respectively, were monitored to gauge HVAC performance. The second recharge was performed by using a air/air heat exchanger that captured waste heat from an automobile engine exhaust manifold and transferred it to air that was re-circulated through the hot bed array. Temperatures, pressures, heating rates, cooling rates, and cell array heat transfer specifications are reported.

Cost Analysis of Different Operation Strategies for Falling Particle Receivers

The potential for highly efficient and cost competitive solar energy collection at high temperatures drives the actual research and development activities for particle tower systems. One promising concept for particle receivers is the falling particle receiver. This paper is related to a particle receiver, in which falling ceramic particles form a particle curtain, which absorbs the concentrated solar radiation. Complex operation strategies will result in higher receiver costs, for both investment and operation. The objective of this paper is to assess the influence of the simultaneous variation of receiver costs and efficiency characteristics on levelized cost of heat (LCOH) and on levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). Applying cost assumptions for the particle receiver and the particle transport system, the LCOE are estimated and compared for each considered concept. The power level of the compared concepts is 125 MWel output at design point. The sensitivity of the results on the specific cost assumptions is analyzed. No detailed evaluation is done for the thermal storage, but comparable storage utilization and costs are assumed for all cases.

Structural Analysis of a Direct Heated Tubular Solar Receiver for Supercritical CO2 Brayton Cycle

Closed-loop super-critical carbon dioxide (sCO2) Brayton cycles are being evaluated in combination with concentrating solar power to provide higher thermal-to-electric conversion efficiencies relative to conventional steam Rankine cycles. However, high temperatures (650–700°C) and pressures (20–25 MPa) are required in the solar receiver. In this study, an extensive material review was performed along with a tube size optimization following the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code and B31.1 and B313.3 codes respectively. Subsequently, a thermal-structural model was developed using ANSYS Fluent and Structural to design and analyze the tubular receiver that could provide the heat input for a ∼2 MWth plant. The receiver will be required to provide an outlet temperature of 650°C (at 25 MPa) or 700°C (at 20 MPa). The induced thermal stresses were applied using a temperature gradient throughout the tube while a constant pressure load was applied on the inner wall. The resulting stresses have been validated analytically using constant surface temperatures. The cyclic loading analysis was performed using the Larson-Miller creep model in nCode Design Life to define the structural integrity of the receiver over the desired lifetime of ∼10,000 cycles. The results have shown that the stresses induced by the thermal and pressure load can be withstood by the tubes selected. The creep-fatigue analysis displayed the damage accumulation due to the cycling and the permanent deformation of the tubes. Nonetheless, they are able to support the required lifetime. As a result, a complete model to verify the structural integrity and thermal performance of a high temperature and pressure receiver has been developed. This work will serve as reference for future design and evaluation of future direct and indirect tubular receivers.

Solar Concentrator Shape Characterisation Using Composite Light-Field Imaging

The shape of an installed solar concentrator (e.g. a heliostat) may differ from its original design due to manufacturing defects, structural/wind loads and thermal expansion. By measuring the shape of a solar concentrator, it is possible to account for the deviation in optical performance from its original design point. A method to measure concentrator shape needs to be fast, accurate, and not involve contact or interference with the reflective surface of the concentrator. State-of-the-art techniques include flux mapping, photogrammetry, and deflectometry using conventional cameras. This paper presents a study to characterise solar concentrator shapes using light-field imaging. Conventional cameras capture the light intensity of a point in a scene at a single point in the sensor, creating a two-dimensional image. A light field camera features multiple micro-lenses placed between the main lens and the sensor, providing many small images from slightly different angles in a single shot. This information is used to reconstruct the position of a light source in space. The advantage of this new technique to the ones mentioned above is that the light field camera is robust and self-contained, which allows easy-to-use application in heliostat fields. In this study, light-field camera measurements were performed with flat mirrors and a curved mirror under laboratory conditions. In order to resolve the surface of the mirror surfaces, several methods to impose contours of the mirror surface have been studied, including dirt, small water droplets, scattering of low-power laser light, and paper-marks. A wide range of camera-to-mirror distances between 43 cm and 5 m have been studied. Greater distances allow the capture of the entire surface, but decrease the precision of depth measurements. In order to obtain high precision measurements while being able to capture the entire surface, a compositing strategy has been developed, combining several light-field image measurements. The overall accuracy of the system was improved further by averaging measurements over several image frames. Subsequently, the reconstructed surface points have been fed to a ray-tracing algorithm realized in Matlab/Python. Results in this study are able to resolve the shape of small concentrators to sub-millimetre precision when taking pictures at a distance of 0.4 m.

Solar Load Ratio Parameters for a Passive Solar Heat Pipe System

The Solar Load Ratio (SLR) method is a performance prediction algorithm for passive solar space heating systems developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Based on curve fits of detailed thermal simulations of buildings, the algorithm provides fast estimation of monthly solar savings fraction for direct gain, indirect gain (water wall and concrete wall) and sunspace systems of a range of designs. Parameters are not available for passive solar heat pipe systems, which are of the isolated gain type. While modern computers have increased the speed with which detailed simulations can be performed, the quick estimates generated by the SLR method are still useful for early building design comparisons and for educational purposes. With this in mind, the objective of this project was to develop SLR predictions for heat pipe systems, which use heat pipes for one-way transport of heat into the building. A previous thermal network was used to simulate the heat pipe system with Typical Meteorological Year (TMY3) weather data for 13 locations across the US, representing ranges of winter temperature and available sunshine. A range of (nonsolar) load-to-collector ratio LCR = 1–15 W/m2K was tested for each location. The thermal network, along with TMY3 data, provided monthly-average-daily absorbed solar radiation and building load to calculate SLR. Losses from the solar aperture in a heat pipe system are very low compared to conventional passive solar systems, thus the load-to-collector ratio of the solar aperture was neglected in these preliminary calculations. Likewise, nighttime insulation is unnecessary for a heat pipe system, and was not considered. An optimization routine was used to determine an exponential fit (the heart of the SLR method) to simulated monthly solar savings fraction (SSF) across all locations and LCR values. Accuracy of SSF predicted by SLR compared to the thermal network results was evaluated. The largest errors (up to 50%) occurred for months with small heating loads (< 80 K days), which inflated SSF. Limiting the optimization to the heating season (October to March), reduced the error in SSF to an average of 4.24% and a standard deviation of 5.87%. These results expand the applications of the SLR method to heat pipe systems, and allow building designers to use this method to estimate the thermal benefits of heat pipe systems along with conventional direct gain, indirect gain and sunspace systems.

Dynamic Model Development of Linear Fresnel Solar Field

As a dispatchable clean energy source, concentrated solar power (CSP) can be one of the key technologies to overcome many problems related to fossil fuel consumption and electricity balancing problems. Solar is a variable location, time and weather dependent source of energy, which sets challenges to solar field operations. With proper dynamic simulation tools it is possible to study dynamics of CSP field under changing weather conditions, find optimum control strategies, and plan and predict the performance of the field. CSP technology considered in this paper, linear Fresnel reflector (LFR), is a proven line focusing technology, having simpler design but suffering in optical performance compared to more mature parabolic trough (PT) technology. Apros dynamic simulation software is used to configure and simulate the solar field. Apros offers a possibility to dynamically simulate field behavior with varying collector configuration, field layout and control mode under varying irradiation conditions. The solar field applies recirculation (RC) as a control mode and direct steam generation (DSG) producing superheated steam. DSG sets challenges for the control scheme, which main objective is to maintain constant steam pressure and temperature at the solar field outlet under varying inlet water and energy conditions, while the steam mass flow can vary. The design and formulation of an entire linear Fresnel solar field in Apros is presented, as well as the obtained control scheme. The field includes user defined amount of collector modules, control system and two modules describing solar irradiation on the field. As two-phase water/steam flow is used, an accurate 6-equation model is used in Apros. Irradiation on the solar field under clear sky conditions is calculated according to time, position and Linke turbidity factor. Overcast conditions can be created by the clear sky index. For LFR single-axis sun tracking system is applied. In order to test the model functionality and to investigate the field behavior, thermal performance of the field was simulated at different dates at two different locations, and the results were compared. Similar field dimensions and control schemes were applied in each case, and simulations were done for full 24 hours in order to study the daily operations and ensure process stability. Control scheme functionality is evaluated based on the plant behavior in simulation cases having different operational conditions. The proper operability of the configured LFR model is evaluated. Obtained performance results show differences between locations and variation depending on season and time. The importance of a proper control system is revealed. The results show that the dynamic model development of a solar field is necessary in order to simulate plant behavior under varying irradiation conditions and to further develop optimal field control schemes and field optimizing process. The future work in the development of the LFR model presented will focus on dynamic response behavior development under transient conditions and field start-up and shut down procedure development.

High-Temperature Heat Transport and Storage Using LBE Alloy for Concentrated Solar Power System

Liquid metals have received growing attention as a potential replacement for more conventional heat transfer fluids in concentrated solar power (CSP) systems. Owing to liquid metals high thermal conductivity, an increase in solar receiver efficiency as well as higher serviceable temperatures could enable more advanced power cycles to be integrated to the CSP system. Recently, CSIRO carried out research on a solar air turbine system which includes a demonstration of a high-temperature pressurized air receiver combined with high-temperature thermal storage. Since the operation temperature of a solar air turbine system is much higher than that of conventional CSP systems, Lead-Bismuth Eutectic (LBE) alloy was chosen for its favorable high temperature heat transport properties and relative ease of storage. The heat test apparatus consisted of a LBE-air heat exchanger, storage tanks with internal heating elements and a pumping system developed by CSIRO. During the test, approximately 1,000 kg of LBE was successfully pumped while capturing and storing approximately 35MJ of solar energy. The test successfully transferred heat from the solar air receiver to the LBE, with the temperature of stored LBE reaching over 770 °C. This paper will present the concept of the test system, design of its components, procedures and results of the test, and also lessons learnt.