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Silica sand mining – “Expanding the amount of energy that can be stored in sand is as simple as adding more sand” IMAGE © Homerun Resources which is working with NREL on using its silica sand for thermal energy storage “Expanding the amount of energy that can be stored in sand is as simple as …
Continue reading “ARPA-E-winning thermal energy storage in sand wins commercial interest”
Source: China Solar Thermal Alliance On May 28, the core equipment of the 100,000 kW (100 MW) thermal energy storage solar thermal project in Bortala by Xinhua Hydropower Company Limited, including the evaporator, steam drum, superheater, reheater, and preheater, was successfully lifted into place, marking the completion of the lifting of all large components of …
Abstract: High–temperature solar reactors, which directly heat particle materials, are one of the promising paths leading to more sustainable industrial processes. In case of controlled atmosphere processes, the presence of a window could strongly increase the system efficiency. Nevertheless, so far, particle deposition on the window remains a challenge. This paper proposes an innovative solution …
Abstract One objective for the 3rd Generation of Concentrating Solar Power technologies is to improve the efficiency of Central Tower, which is among the most promising solar concentration technologies. Central Tower Power Generation Plants are made up of hundreds of heliostats that redirect solar radiation to a target. The precision of the solar tracking is …
Abstract A new optimization method was proposed to design high-performance deformable petal heliostat fields for concentrated solar power. The petal field was divided into individual sectors, each separately designed to balance pattern orderliness and flexibility. A suitable high-dimensional optimization algorithm was identified from 129 different algorithms using multi-algorithm filtering. To examine the proposed method, four …
Abstract Falling particle receiver (FPR) systems are a rapidly developing technology for concentrating solar power applications. Solid particles are used as both the heat transfer fluid and system thermal energy storage media. Through the direct irradiation of the solid particles, flux and temperature limitations of tube-bundle receivers can be overcome, leading to higher operating temperatures …
Work on the G3P3 particle receiver system at Sandia National Laboratories IMAGE © Sandia National Laboratories In 2018, three years after the completion of the second of two utility-scale tower-type Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants in the US, the Department of Energy (DOE) held a competition to decide the funding direction for the next generation …
Continue reading “Sandia’s Gen-3 particle-based CSP demo to debut this fall”