Solar Steam Supply: Initial Operation of a Plant
Abstract
Saturated steam is a common and widespread medium to transfer heat in industrial processes. To replace a significant amount of process heat from fossil resources one option is the use of solar thermal energy. Within the project “Pilotanlage zur solaren Prozesswärmeerzeugung mit Parabolrinnenkollektoren” (Pilot Plant for Solar Process Heat with Parabolic Trough Collectors) a parabolic trough collector field has been mounted on the roof of an industrial production site to demonstrate the solar supply of saturated steam for a steam network. The industrial partners Solitem and Alanod were responsible for the preparation of the roof installation and the set-up of the solar field and other equipment. Scientific support has been provided by the Solar-Institut Jülich of the Aachen University of Applied Sciences, the Institute of Thermodynamics and Heat Technology at the University Stuttgart, Prof. Volker Quaschning of the HTW Berlin and the Institute of Solar Research at the German Aerospace Center. Major scientific subjects were the solar system design and its integration into the plant’s energy supply and monitoring followed by evaluation. They were accompanied by a test of the PTC1800 parabolic trough collector (Janotte et al, 2009), an extension for process heat applications within the program Greenius (Dersch et al, 2008) ) and investigations on the integration of parabolic trough collectors into the standard DIN EN 12975-2 for collector testing. The project ended in 2010. This paper focuses on the layout and monitoring results of the installation.