ENEL, Rome, Italy
Italian utility ENEL and the Italian National Agency for New Technologies joined together to develop a new kind of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP), using Parabolic Trough CSP to generate electricity during sunny hours as well as under overcast conditions or at night. This new type of CSP plant depends on molten salt as a medium for storing heat in large, well-insulated tanks.
Molten salt has several advantages over the previously used pressurized oil because it can operate at a higher temperature which maximizes energy efficiency and potentially reducing the consumption of fossil fuels. The tanks are half the size because no oil-to-salt heat exchangers are required, and they provide seven hours of thermal storage. The salt can also be cooled and re-used, which is much more efficient than oil which degrades with use.
Keeping salt in the liquid state presented a challenge for ENEL. They used COMSOL Multiphysics and its built in library of heat transfer coefficients to analyze temperature and heat loss throughout the drainage circuit, optimizing both its geometry and insulation properties.
Suggested Stories
Metamaterials Make Physics Seem Like Magic
Metamaterials are manufactured, structured materials that they can interact and manipulate wave phenomena such that ...
Behind the Rumble and Roar of Mahindra Motorcycles
Optimization is a subtle and delicate art, especially when it comes to motorcycles. Regulatory requirements on pass-by ...
From Nanoantennas to Deep Space Satellites, Electron Emission Enables Efficient Power Generation
Researchers from the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the European Space Agency (ESA) are developing power ...
Bosch Powers the Automotive Sector Toward an Electrified Future
To design three-phase inverters and DC link capacitors, two integral components of electric vehicle drivetrains, Bosch ...
