Concentrated solar energy – the path for efficient thermal conversion to power and fuels

• 来源期刊: 科学通报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2019,（8）
• 页码范围: 485-486
• 页数: 2页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Concentrated solar energy provides an unlimited clean source of high-temperature process heat. It can be therefore used for power generation by driving heat engines, as well as for fuel production by driving endothermic chemical transformations [1]. Currently, the main optical configurations to concentrate the direct (beam) solar radiation at large scale are the line-focussing parabolic trough and linear Fresnel systems, and the point-focussing solar tower and dish systems. They are characterized in terms of their solar flux concentration ratio C – the solar radiative power over the solar receiver's aperture area at the focal plane, normalized with respect to the direct normal irradiation (DNI). C is typically at the level of 100 and 1,000 suns for line-focusing and point-focusing optical configurations, respectively. These solar concentrating systems have been proven to be technically feasible in large-scale commercial applications aimed at electricity generation in which a heat transfer fluid, typically air, water, synthetic oil, helium, sodium, or molten salt, is solar-heated and further used to drive conventional Rankine, Brayton, and Stirling heat engines in concentrated solar power (CSP) plants. On the other hand, solar thermochemical fuel processing, referred here as concentrated solar fuel (CSF) plants, are not as far developed as CSP, but they employ the same aforementioned solar concentrating systems.