Techno-economic assessment from a transient simulation of a concentrated solar thermal plant to deliver high-temperature industrial process heat

Philip Ingenhoven, Leok Lee, Woei Saw, Muhammad Mujahid Rafique, Daniel Potter and Graham J. Nathan

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2023, vol. 185, issue C

Abstract: The need for new technologies to provide economically viable sources of high-temperature heat without any net CO2 emissions for industrial chemical processes has become a global priority. Concentrated solar thermal heat generation can play an important role in meeting this challenge. We report a detailed bottom-up techno-economic analysis of a concentrated solar thermal plant to deliver process heat at a temperature of 1100 °C at the scale anticipated for a commercial demonstrator. The system consists of a 50 MWth solar concentration subsystem with heliostats and a tower, a novel solar expanding-vortex particle receiver (SEVR) and a packed bed storage system, together with a combustion back-up to allow continuous operation. The system was optimized to determine the minimum levelized cost of heat (LCOH) from a detailed transient model of the complete system. Significantly, the system with the maximum efficiency for the receiver or storage alone does not deliver the best annual energetic performance, highlighting the need to understand the detailed interplay between the two systems to optimize overall performance. While this system is not yet optimized for the lowest cost of industrial heat, the sensitivity analysis provides important insight as to how to move toward this optimum. This system yields the lowest values of LCOH for the solar component of between 37 and 39 USD/GJ for a corresponding annual solar share (SSann) of 28% and 53% of the total heat demand of the industrial process, respectively. However, importantly, this solar share can be almost doubled for only a 5% increase in LCOH.

Keywords: Concentrated solar thermal energy; High temperature process heat; Solar vortex receiver; Solar heat for industrial processes (SHIP); Thermocline storage; Techno-economic analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032123004835
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:185:y:2023:i:c:s1364032123004835

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2023.113626

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().