Parametric Analysis of Various Concentrated Solar Power Technologies with Different Heat Transfer Fluids and Thermal Energy Storage

The advent development and deployment of concentrating solar power to produce energy has immense potential for the production of clean, eco-friendly, and sustainable sources of electric power and also for thermos power generation in the extended period. This solar energy is harnessed through two technologies, one being the photovoltaic and the other being the concentrated solar power. There is consistently growing interest in developing and improving the technologies of concentrated solar power (CSP). The proposed work analyses the different CSP technologies and storage systems with different heat-transferring fluids. Here, the solar energy is transferred and stored using oil and molten salts as the heat transfer fluid in the collector. To analyse the performance of a CSP plant under various parametric changes such as direct normal irradiation (DNI), difference of temperature in the solar receiver, mass flow rate of heat transfer fluids, solar output and a MATLAB code is utilized as a simulating tool. It is found that the temperature difference of TES with Molten salt as storage comes out to be highest and is 300 °C and with oil comes out to be 290 °C. The two-tank thermal storing system is found to be less effective as compared to the cascaded thermal storage system.