Economical and environmental contributions of installing a solar heating system in an industrial process

Abstract

Aware of the harmful consequences of climate change, several industrial sectors search for alternatives to minimize the environmental impact of their production processes. The use of thermal solar collectors is a promising alternative for the heat supply in industrial processes, contributing to the reduction of fossil fuel consumption for this purpose and, consequently, mitigating the environmental impact caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The present research analyzes the contribution of a Solar Heating for Industrial Processes (SHIP) system in an industry’s environmental and economic spheres on the outskirts of Porto Alegre, south Brazil. A solar field of Linear Fresnel concentrating collectors is simulated in SAM software. The field has an aperture area of 352 m² and operates in the supply of saturated steam for a given industrial process. The results indicate that the SHIP system would be able to supply 729 GJth to the industrial process annually. It means a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the magnitude of tens of tons of CO2-equivalent each year, whose value increases as the operation of the conventional steam-generating boiler moves away from ideal (theoretical efficiency of 100%). Two methodologies are used to calculate LCOH, resulting in 52 and 54 U$D/MWhth values for the analyzed SHIP system. Compared with the heat supply through burning natural gas and mineral coal, a solar thermal heating system can be evaluated as an environmentally responsible and economically advantageous alternative for the industrial sector that decides on this investment.