Falling particle and sodium billboard receivers for polar-field solar tower plants: A techno-economic comparison

Filip Sobic, Giancarlo Gentile, Marco Binotti, Andrea Giostri, Omar Pasqualotto and Giampaolo Manzolini

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2025, vol. 211, issue C

Abstract: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems utilizing tower technology are acknowledged as a promising solution for generating dispatchable and renewable electricity. In the pursuit of heightened efficiency and competitiveness, novel receiver technologies, including falling particle and sodium billboard receivers, are under investigation due to their capacity to achieve higher maximum temperatures compared to solar salts receivers. This study presents methodologies and findings from a techno-economic comparison between falling particle, sodium billboard, and conventional billboard receiver adopting solar salts as heat transfer fluid. For each investigated technology, receiver design is optimized through a parametric procedure based on LCOE minimization. For a given solar field and location, the height and width of the particle receiver, as well as, storage size are optimized, while for billboard receivers number of panels and tube diameter are also considered. Results obtained for a 100 MWth solar tower in Daggett, California indicate that the sodium receiver exhibits the best energy performance with a 22.2 % yearly solar-to-electric efficiency, followed by solar salts technology at 20.0 %, and particle receiver at 18.4 %. However, from a techno-economic perspective, particle receiver shows the lowest LCOE, with solar salts and sodium technologies showing values approximately 13.3 % and 13.9 % higher, respectively. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to show the significant influence of cost assumptions on the results.

Keywords: Concentrated solar power; Solar tower; Particle receiver; Sodium receiver; Techno-economic analysis; Optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403212400933X
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:211:y:2025:i:c:s136403212400933x

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.2024.115207

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 ().