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Energy performance enhancement of solar thermal power plants by solar parabolic trough collectors and evacuated tube collectors ‐based preheating units
Author(s) -
Alsagri Ali Sulaiman
Publication year - 2020
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.5431
Subject(s) - parabolic trough , working fluid , boiler (water heating) , solar energy , concentrated solar power , power station , nuclear engineering , photovoltaic thermal hybrid solar collector , thermal power station , thermal efficiency , thermal , solar power , environmental science , thermal energy storage , nanofluids in solar collectors , combined cycle , process engineering , engineering , mechanical engineering , turbine , power (physics) , waste management , meteorology , electrical engineering , thermodynamics , chemistry , physics , organic chemistry , combustion
Summary Solar steam power plant is the dominant technology in the category of solar thermal power systems. In steam power cycles, there is usually a couple of steam lines, extracted from medium‐pressure and low‐pressure turbines, to preheat the working fluid before the boiler. This although leads to an increase in the energy efficiency of the cycle, reduces the contribution of the turbine proportionally. Therefore, finding an alternative method of preheating the working fluid would be effective in further enhancement of the efficiency of the system. In this study, the feasibility of using solar collectors for the preheating process in a solar steam power plant is investigated. For this, parabolic trough solar collectors and evacuated tube solar collectors based on a wide range of different scenarios and configurations are employed. The plant is designed, sized and thermodynamically analyzed for a case study in Saudi Arabia where there is a large solar irradiation potential over the year. The results of the simulations show that, among all the considered scenarios, a power cycle aided by a set of parabolic trough collectors as the preheating unit is the best choice technically. This configuration leads to about 23% increased power generation rate and 6.5% efficiency enhancement compared to the conventional design of the plant.