Skip to main content

Parabolic Trough Power Plants (PTPP)


The Parabolic Trough Power Plants (PPTP) is developed Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) thermal plants that are using commercially. It has thousands of solar collector assemblies in a solar field. Each solar collector assembly tracks parabolic trough. Solar collector consists of four major sub systems.

i.                     Parabolic Reflectors (Mirrors)
ii.                    Receiving Tube
iii.                   Metal support structure
iv.                   Tracking system



Parabolic Reflectors (Mirrors): Parabolic shaped glass with coating on the backside of aluminum or silver. Shape of the glass provides maximum concentration of sunlight on one point to maximize the use of energy. By using the silver coated parabolic reflector 93.5% of sunlight can be reflected while the use of aluminum coated reflector can be cheaper.

Receiving Tube: Metal tubes covered with glass also known as heat collection element (HCE). Long Pipe of HCE includes liquid like (mineral oil, synthetic oil, molten salt etc.) running in it. The material used in HCE has importance due to the exchange of energy from sunlight to the heating of liquid.

Metal support structure: Usually the steel structure supports the parabolic reflector and receiver tube. The orientation of structure is design to maintain the ideal angles of reflection.

Tracking system: The mechanical tracking of Sun is necessary to utilize the maximum energy. For this purpose position sensors and motors are use with their drives and control systems.

                Process of PTPP starts with the reflection of sunlight from parabolic reflector which concentrates the sunlight to the focal line where receiving tubes are placed in which the liquid (mineral oil, synthetic oil, molten salt etc) running in it. Due to the sunlight liquid gets heated and then the liquid carries the heat to a boiler heat exchanger, after reaching temperature of 400oC. Now the heat is transferred to the water and the water turned into steam to drive the turbine.


                Only in southwestern United States there are 11 Parabolic Trough Power Plants and operating out of which 9 are in California since 1980’s. Producing around 420 Mega Watts annual net output. The recently completed Nevada Solar One PTPP has a capacity of 64 MW.


References:


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) Tower

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) Tower Ancient times perhaps the Egyptian using mirrors to brighter up their houses or tombs. At that time they needed a polished metal glass to illuminate the interior and a person that can move it with the movement of sun because in those times the human power is the main resource of energy but with the passage of time many mechanical mechanism has substituted the human power. Today electricity is the main source of energy and heliostat are move with the motors to track the sunlight. And then it converted into electricity. Heliostat is the backbone of concentrated solar power. The concentrated sunlight on the tower through heliostat produces high temperature to convert the water into steam which is then use conventionally to operate the turbine to generate the electricity. Initially these types of systems were built in 80’s in Europe, Japan and Russia later on in United States. Salts can store more heat energy because salts have higher m...
Post a Comment
Read more