A Novel Dual Receiver–Storage Design for Concentrating Solar Thermal Plants Using Beam-Down Optics

David Saldivia and Robert A. Taylor ()
Additional contact information
David Saldivia: School of Photovoltaics and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Robert A. Taylor: School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 10, 1-23

Abstract: Advanced power cycles—such as the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO 2 ) cycle—have the potential to reduce the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of concentrated solar thermal power (CST) plants by significantly boosting their overall solar-to-electric efficiency. To successfully integrate these cycles into CST plants, the industry may need to transition away from liquid working fluids (e.g., synthetic oils and molten salts) to solid and/or gaseous heat transfer media, which are more stable at high temperatures. To address this challenge, this study investigates a novel rotating receiver–storage unit that could enable high-temperature CST plants. A validated numerical model is presented for the charging and discharging processes of the proposed design. It was found that with cast steel as the storage medium in the proposed design, it is possible to achieve >70% receiver efficiency for operation temperatures of 850–1000 K. The overall plant model shows this design is best for relatively small CST systems as modularized units of 10 m diameter (reaching an energy density around 80 kWh/m 3 ), which can be used to drive a 5 MW e sCO 2 CST plant. These findings suggest that such a design would have up to 9 h of storage and could be effectively employed as an efficient peaking plant.

Keywords: concentrated solar thermal; beam-down receiver; solid heat transfer medium; dual receiver-storage unit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/10/4157/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/10/4157/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:10:p:4157-:d:1149501

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().