Evaluation methodologies of damage related issues for heat exchangers in the thermal storage energy system

Abstract

Thermal oil is used as a heat transfer fluid in many thermal solar power systems, while molten salts are used to store thermal energy. The oil absorbs solar energy and transports it to a water-steam cycle via heat exchangers, where it is transformed into electric energy via a turbo-generator or stored in a thermal energy storage device for subsequent transmission to the water-steam cycle. The complexity of these thermal solar plants is rather significant, as they mix conventional engineering used in power stations (water-steam cycle) or petrochemical (oil pipeline) with modern solar (parabolic trough collector) and heat storage (molten salts) technology. This paper focuses on modelling in heat exchanger tubes in molten salt energy storage systems, and it offers a comprehensive model of the process. By developing such a model, the groundwork for future study into heat exchangers model failure analysis is established.