Techno-economic assessment of application of particle-based concentrated solar thermal systems in Australian industry

Abstract

Australia has significant areas with high quality solar resources, but the requirement for large scale solar thermal plants to be financially competitive in the electricity market appears to have hindered uptake. Industrial use of heat provides an alternative route to market where the technology is not impacted by poor efficiencies in converting heat to electricity and an appropriate scale can be applied to the demands of a specific site. A re-examination of prior industrial energy use studies in Australia was used in combination with solar data and published data on industrial sites to identify three specific industrial sites for case studies. These sites were selected to cover applications in three industries with varying scale and temperature requirements. The primary solar technology selected utilizes a particle receiver on a tower with associated storage and heat exchanger for hot water/steam production or heating a gas reactor. The wide range of temperatures possible with this technology appears to be desirable for development of a general-purpose industrial heat system. Comparison with parabolic trough systems that are commercially available was conducted for cases where the required temperatures were appropriate. In all assessments, the optimized solar plant designs approach cost competitiveness with the estimated cost of natural gas purchase for the relevant locations and industrial scales. In smaller and lower temperature applications, parabolic trough systems are likely to be appropriate conventional choices, but the particle system exhibited a high degree of flexibility across multiple sites and applications, which is encouraging to future commercial application.