INNOSOL – Environmental Aspects of the Open Volumetric Receiver Technology
Abstract
In the year 2009 the first research solar tower power plant with open volumetric receiver technology was set into operation in Juelich (Koll et al, 2009). Already during the construction period data concerning construction efforts and components were collected in a detailed quantity structure within the framework of research activities of the “Virtual Institute of Central Receiver Power Plants – vICERP”1. On this basis, a calculation of the environmental impacts resulting from the construction and commissioning phase (LCA – life cycle assessment; cradle to gate approach) according to ISO 14040/14044 (DIN 2006a, DIN 2006b) was carried out. In a second step, the results were investigated towards the most effective optimization approaches in order to achieve a reduction of environmental impacts. This analysis pointed out that the reduction of the used unalloyed steel amounts for the mounting structure (heliostat) and the reinforcement steel (tower) or their (partial) replacement with environmentally expedient materials offer the most effective approaches to reduce the environmental impacts of the solar tower construction (Hoffschmidt und Fricke, 2010).