Research On Parabolic Trough Solar Collector And System Integration Thermal Power

Solar energy is considered as a promising energy resource due to its infinite reserves and cleanness nature. It may be one of most effective routes to solve the three significant issues including energy shortage, environment pollution and greenhouse effect in the 21th century. Concentraed solar power plant (CSP) is one of the main technologies for power generation from solar radiation. However, the development of the CSP technologies is restricted by low thermal efficiency and high investment cost.Hence, reducing the cost of core unit component and integrating efficient system integration are the urgent problems to solve in solar thermal power generation. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Major Project of Chinese National Programs for Fundamental Research and Development (973 Program), the thermal performance of a parabolic trough collector was investigated by experiment and simulation, and the thermal and economical performance of a new solar power plant combining parabolic trough and tower was investigated.High-efficiency vacuum heat collection element is the core component of collector unit, and its performance highly affects the whole system efficiency. In this paper a parabolic trough experimental platform of solar collector system (PTCS) was developed and the performance of the PTCS was investigated with different solar flux and different inlet synthetic oil temperature.As a result, heat loss was about 220 W/m for the receiver with an 180℃temperature difference between the collector and the ambient. The collector efficiency is in the range of 45-55% when the fluid temperature 50-200℃.Based on the experiment, the optical and heat transfer was simulated on the two type of trough collector to investigate the heat flux distribution and temperature distribution on the surface of absorber. The effects of oil flow rate and inlet temperature on the temperature distribution of the absorber and found the oil flow rate was the most effective factor on temperature distribution of the absorber. The relationship describing the effects of solar flux, oil flow rate and inlet temperature on collector efficiency was obtained based on the methodology of least squares support vector machineTo improve the low steam temperature in a parabolic trough power plant and the low optical efficiency of solar tower power at large scale, a novel solar thermal power plant combining parabolic trough and tower was proposed by the research group.The annual thermal efficiency of the novel plant can be increased by approximately comparing with a sole solar parabolic trough power plant or a sole solar tower power plant. Through economic analysis, the novel system investment is 3625€/kWe,which was approximately 3.5%lower than that of the trough generation and approximately 17.6% lower than that of the solar tower power. The levelied cost of electricity of the novel system approximately 0.160€/kWh, which is 12.1% lower than that of the trough plant and 7.0% lower than that of the solar tower power.