Thermal Storage System Development for a 1 MW CSP Pilot Plant Using an Organic Rankine Cycle
Abstract
Molten salt has been widely used for heat storage on Concentrated Solar Power plants and even as heat transfer fluid in some cases. Morocco has become in the past years a highly attractive place for CSP projects, one of the most promising projects under development is a 1 MW Pilot CSP using an Organic Rankine Cycle. The plant’s particular configuration imposes working temperatures ranging from 170°C up to 270°C- 285°C, so that the use of salt as a conventional sensible heat storage medium is no more possible. In this work we focus on how to implement molten salt as a phase change material for storage purposes. A comparison with other technologies has to be studied in order to define the economical ant technical competitiveness of this solution toward those other possibilities, and then a numerical model may help describe the systems behavior in terms charge/discharge processes, HTF temperatures and rated thermal power output. A small scale prototype shall be built later to test those parameters in real environmental conditions.
Keywords
Concentrated solar power, Organic rankine cycle, Molten salt, Phase change material…