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Hybrid solar parabolic dish power plant and high‐temperature phase change material energy storage system
Author(s) -
Mehrpooya Mehdi,
Ghorbani Bahram,
Sadeghzadeh Milad
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of energy research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.808
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1099-114X
pISSN - 0363-907X
DOI - 10.1002/er.4637
Subject(s) - thermal energy storage , boiler (water heating) , exergy , nuclear engineering , exergy efficiency , phase change material , energy storage , solar energy , power station , thermal power station , process engineering , mass flow rate , environmental science , materials science , thermodynamics , waste management , thermal , engineering , power (physics) , electrical engineering , physics
Summary In this study, a conventional steam power plant with two regenerative boilers is considered, and one of its boilers is replaced with parabolic solar dish collectors and storing the produced thermal energy by the phase change material (PCM) in a storage tank. The results show the necessity of the existence of an auxiliary fired‐gas boiler to provide constant load during the whole 24 hours. The performance of the proposed hybridized system is evaluated through energy and exergy analyses. It was demonstrated that substituting solar collectors with one of the boilers marginally lowers the energy efficiency but increases the exergy efficiency of the whole power plant up to 41.76%. Moreover, it is found out that this hybridization decreases the total irreversibility of the power plant in comparison with the base case, from 51.1 to 47.2 MW. The parametric analysis states that raising the mass flow rate of the heat transfer fluid in the solar collectors not only enhances the system performance but also increases the volume of the PCM tank.