SOLAR POWER PLANTS FROM TURKEY
Breakthrough technology: DSG for parabolic troughs
Rikki Stancich, 15 July 2010 (CSP Today)
[Oğuz Çapan, CEO, Hitite Solar Enerji:] "When I looked at parabolic trough technology from the perspective of a total outsider as a former oil field production station and pipeline design engineer, I saw that some very basic things were done wrong. Therefore, the existing systems couldn’t handle direct steam generation and instead was limited to using heat transfer fluids…[I thought to] keep the receivers stationary like the high-pressure steam pipelines in power plants…[I]t led to a whole different support structure for the parabolic trough…and so we were able to achieve direct steam generation (DSG) at high pressures and temperatures."
[Oğuz Çapan, CEO, Hitite Solar Enerji:] "The main purpose of parabolic trough fields is to generate steam to drive a turbine. If you can’t do direct steam generation…you have to take the heated oil to a central station and run it through the heat exchanger to generate steam….[and] a 15%-20% efficiency loss…Direct steam generation…[has] three main advantages: reduced cost, increased thermodynamic efficiency and reduced operations and maintenance costs…[W]e can lower costs by around 20%."
click to enlarge[Oğuz Çapan, CEO, Hitite Solar Enerji:] "There are temperature limitations when using oil as a heat transfer fluid, and molten salts also have disadvantages…[With DSG,] we have achieved 420 degrees Celcius and I am confident we can achieve 500 degrees in the near future… well beyond what has previously been possible…We are currently working on a proposal for a 50MW project in Turkey…[W]e will begin with a 500kw unit, which is designed to be part of the 50MW plant…[We are considering] developing a system in the US. It is important to have a qualified, independent third-party to carry out the testing, and NREL and EPRI fill this role…"
[Oğuz Çapan, CEO, Hitite Solar Enerji:] "…[A]s a former oilman, I strongly believe that the peak oil is just around the corner….Turkey is an important market – it imports 95% of oil and gas and it has a rapidly growing industrial infrastructure to support…North Africa and the Desertec concept are important. India and China. The Middle East is also interesting, even though it does not have an immediate energy problem."
click to enlarge[Oğuz Çapan, CEO, Hitite Solar Enerji:] "Mirrors are an important part of the system, Instead of specially manufactured glass mirrors we use thin strips of flat mirrors stuck onto the parabolic surface. The result is so strong that the workers can walk on the mirrors without breaking them. This has also eliminated the high cost of specially fabricated large parabolic glass mirrors…The reflectivity of flat surfaces – in physics – is better than curved surfaces…"
[Oğuz Çapan, CEO, Hitite Solar Enerji:] "Our desalination technology won the [World Bank/Bill Gates Foundation] Development Marketplace 2006 Competition…It operates at a low temperature and runs off waste heat. We have combined the desalination unit with the parabolic trough system, but in fact it can be bolted on to any system producing waste heat…[U]sing the waste heat of a hotel’s centralized air conditioning units located at the Meditterranean coast of Turkey…[the desalination technology filled] 100% of the hotel’s water requirement from the sea…[W]e reuse the hot water for the CSP system – in this way the closed loop water circuit resolves environmental issues surrounding traditional desalination plants."
posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:03 AM
1 Comments:
“When you think of solar you automatically think GREEN! I used to think that way myself but in the desert southwest the MASSIVE use of water by SOME solar power plants such as Hualapai Valley Solar AKA Mohave Sun Power cannot be labeled as a GREEN project. With depleting water supplies in Mohave County Arizona the Hualapai Valley Solar Project will permanently damage an ENTIRE communities water supply and thus their property values, livelihoods and LIFE ITSELF. The Department of Energy and any other entities that approve stimulus funding for solar power plants should NOT approve funding for any solar plants in the southwest that are not DRY/AIR-cooled power plants.
Mr. Obama has not critiqued these funding sources in the area of water use in the desert southwest. Instead of solar being a solution to fossil fuel use it has become another damming industry because of the greed of corporations like Hualapai Valley Solar utilizing a FINITE RESOURCE SUCH AS WATER to produce energy. The policies of these projects is loose and not well thought out. It seems to me that we have simply had the tax paying American pay corporate welfare to companies that will simply be the NEW SOLAR/OIL KINGS!”” This issue SHOULD be a NATIONAL issue across the board. Our local government (Mohave County Arizona Board of Supervisors, Gary Watson, Tom Sockwell and Buster Johnson) have approved this project as a WET-cooled project although it defies our General Plan. UNBELIEVABLE but true. I call this a corruption of the public process. Mohave County Arizona has allowed Hualapai Valley Solar to WASTE and DEPLETE the very thing that gives this community LIFE, its WATER. They have taken away our futures and the futures of our children and grand children.
The southwest will tumble under this kind of environmental attack and it will happen quickly. For the greater good, for jobs? Just as many jobs are created by the DRY-cooling process so that premise is inaccurate! I don't see the good in any of this and the Obama administration needs to take heed IMMEDIATELY or the southwest will not survive!
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