Solar Salt Latent Heat Thermal Storage for a Small Solar Organic Rankine Cycle Plant

Costa Pereira, Carolina, Mahkamov, Khamid, Kenisarin, Murat, Lynn, Kevin, Halimic, Elvedin and Mullen, David (2018) Solar Salt Latent Heat Thermal Storage for a Small Solar Organic Rankine Cycle Plant. In: Proceedings of the ASME 2018 12th International Conference on Energy Sustainability collocated with the ASME 2018 Power Conference and the ASME 2018 Nuclear Forum: Lake Buena Vista, Florida, USA. June 24–28, 2018. American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), New York, ES2018-7326. ISBN 9780791851418

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Abstract

The design of the Latent Heat Thermal Storage System (LHTESS) was developed with thermal capacity of about 100 kWh as a part of small solar plant, based on the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). The phase change material (PCM) used is Solar salt with the melting/solidification temperature of about 220°C.

Thermo-physical properties of the PCM were measured, including its phase transition temperature, heat of fusion, specific heat and thermal conductivity. The design of the thermal storage was finalized by means of the 3-D CFD analysis.

The thermal storage system is made of six rectangular boxes with dimensions of 1 m (width) × 0.66 m (height) × 0.47 m (depth). The thermal energy is delivered to each of the thermal storage boxes with the use of thermal oil, heated by Fresnel mirrors. The heat is transferred into and from the PCM in the box using 40 bi-directional heat pipes with the external diameter of about 12 mm. The length of the heat pipe in the PCM box is 430 mm and it is placed in the cylindrical metallic protection cartridge, installed in the thermal storage vessel. The working fluid in the heat pipe is water. A set of metallic screens are installed in the box with the pitch of 8–10 mm to enhance the heat transfer from heat pipes to the PCM and vice-versa during the charging and discharging processes, which take about 4 hours.

The one unit of the described thermal storage system is undergoing the laboratory tests. Preliminary results demonstrate that the performance of the thermal storage is in a good agreement with numerical predictions. After completion of final design modifications, all units will be assembled at the plant’s demonstration site and tested with the ORC turbine.

Item Type:	Book Section
Subjects:	H900 Others in Engineering
Department:	Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Mechanical and Construction Engineering
Depositing User:	Becky Skoyles
Date Deposited:	22 Mar 2019 14:59
Last Modified:	17 Jan 2020 13:10
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/38502

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