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Design, economic, and environmental assessments of linear Fresnel solar power plants
Author(s) -
Mihoub Sofiane
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
environmental progress and sustainable energy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.495
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1944-7450
pISSN - 1944-7442
DOI - 10.1002/ep.13350
Subject(s) - cost of electricity by source , environmental science , backup , thermal energy storage , power station , electricity generation , fossil fuel , process engineering , solar energy , concentrated solar power , molten salt , thermal power station , nuclear engineering , power (physics) , engineering , waste management , electrical engineering , mechanical engineering , materials science , physics , quantum mechanics , metallurgy , thermodynamics
In the present work, the design‐environmental and economic (D2E) comparative study of seven different configurations of Linear Fresnel solar thermal power plants using two‐generation modes (direct and indirect steam generation) with nine various working fluids, with and without integrated thermal energy storage or/and backup fuel system is presented, with minimum levelized cost of energy (LCOE) as objective. This study is based on a power plant of capacity of 50 MW. A sensitivity analysis is developed to optimize the solar multiple of the solar field, Fossil fuel fraction of backup system (BS), and TES hours capacity, using System Advisor Model software. The results show that the wrong choice of plant's components and inexact performance optimization lead to the increasing cost of electricity generated due to operating costs and additional investments. The BS was the most significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions at all sites, contributing over 90% of total emissions, due to its relative contribution (95 kg/MWh). Finally, the combination of the storage and BSs in molten salt mode makes it more competitive under Algerian climates, which confirms that molten salt linear Fresnel solar plant with 25% of a BS and 6 hr of the storage system is the best and optimum solution.