A High-efficiency Solar Thermal Power Plant using a Dense Particle Suspension as the Heat Transfer Fluid

Abstract

Abstract A novel solar power plant concept is presented, based on the use of a dense particle suspension as the heat transfer fluid which allows receiver operation at high temperatures (above 650 °C), opening the possibility of using high-efficiency power generation cycles such as supercritical Rankine cycles. A 50 MW e solar power plant was designed based on this new heat transfer fluid and compared with a conventional molten salt solar power plant. The supercritical Rankine-cycle power block increases the thermal conversion efficiency from 39.9% to 45.4%, corresponding to a 9.6% reduction in the size of the heliostat field. The operating temperature range is increased by 24.5%, which leads to a 12.5% increase in storage density and a 22.5% reduction in the total storage volume.Parasitic power consumption is also reduced due to the elimination of the need for heat tracing. Overall, the combination of increased cycle efficiency, increased storage density and reduced parasitics to leads to a predicted electricity cost reduction of 10.8%.