4 ms·
Concentrated solar costs 3x as much as PV if you want to make electricity. But sometimes what you need is heat, and concentrated solar does it fine. For some r
by ncmncm 5y ago
Concentrated solar costs 3x as much as PV if you want to make electricity.
But sometimes what you need is heat, and concentrated solar does it fine. For some reason not elucidated, nobody seems to be using it for industrial process heat, e.g. making cement.
- olivermarks 5y agohttp://www.brightsourceenergy.com/coalinga#.YnRFv-nMLUJ http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/coalinga#.YnRFv-nMLUJ
- ncmncm 5y agoGreat, using solar to help put fossil carbon into the atmosphere.
- olivermarks 5y agoThat experiment ended in 2014 I think
- xyzzyz 5y agoI wonder how exactly one could use solar to make cement. The Portland cement process requires heating up ingredients to 1500 C. The concentrated solar systems as they actually exist do not get anywhere close to that. You could get this high temperature from concentrated solar, but I don’t know how you could effectively transfer the heat to the ingredients: I don’t think that there exists a practical pumping technology that can work with this hot working fluid, as this is literally hot enough to melt steel.
- chemeng 5y agoThere are working fluids (molten salts, liquid metals, etc) that can work in this regime, typically with ceramic piping systems (usually ceramic lined nickel alloy steels) with all ceramic/graphite pumping systems. That said, it’s used in very niche applications and hard to maintain at the scale required for a CSP plant. If you’re after heat, it would be much simpler to just use the steam. Use it as is, as we have for centuries now, or you could transfer it to a higher thermal capacity oil, and if you want some energy, divert it to a steam turbine. For cement you could presumably use the heat as a preheater, or use the energy for an arc furnace.
- ryzvonusef 5y agohttps://www.cemex.com/-/cemex-and-synhelion-achieve-breakthrough-in-cement-production-with-solar-energy https://www.cemex.com/-/cemex-and-synhelion-achieve-breakthr... first attempt on making solar clinker, from earlier this year
- thechao 5y agoSay it together: "solar thermal powered superheated steam bottle rocket". We build a big, black bottle with a bunch of nozzles on the end, and focus these mirrors on the nozzly-end of the big, black bottle. You can use these "solar tracking mirrors with AI" to account for the fact that your tower is now going up faster than it normally does.
- ttyprintk 5y agoAnd the largest ones in Ouarzazate (pronounced Where Za Zat) use at least 2000 af of water annually.
- ryzvonusef 5y agohttps://www.cemex.com/-/cemex-and-synhelion-achieve-breakthrough-in-cement-production-with-solar-energy https://www.cemex.com/-/cemex-and-synhelion-achieve-breakthr... >February 2, 2022 >For the first time ever, CEMEX and Synhelion successfully connected the clinker production process with the Synhelion solar receiver, producing solar clinker. >This revolutionary innovation is an initial step to develop fully solar-driven cement plants. they are trying it out, hopefully it works out for the whole manufacturing process, at an economically feasible rate --- some papers on solar heat: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544220311907 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605... https://www.irena.org/publications/2015/Jan/Solar-Heat-for-Industrial-Processes https://www.irena.org/publications/2015/Jan/Solar-Heat-for-I...