| Project Detail |
Developing a groundbreaking solution for a sustainable process heat sector
The process heating sector is crucial but faces various challenges in its efforts to decarbonise and improve sustainability, due to costly or unreliable solutions. Supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme, the SOLTEC project will develop integrated Solar Fresnel Lens Collectors (FLCs) and Thermochemical Energy Storage (TCES) systems. This initiative will lead to improved efficiency and reduced maintenance costs in TCES systems, enhanced temperature limits of the FLC systems, and significant advancements in solar heat processes. These benefits will not only address the sector’s challenges, but also contribute to its decarbonisation and sustainability efforts.
"This project proposes a game-changing integrated technology of solar Fresnel Lens Collectors (FLCs) and Thermochemical Energy Storage (TCES) systems. This solution is primarily proposed to bring sustainability to the process heating sector, which has been so far very challenging to decarbonize due to a lack of cost-effective and reliable solutions. Besides this main feature, the proposed technology has some distinguishing attributes that make it groundbreaking scientifically and very competitive technically. These are 1) solving the technical challenges of TCES systems, namely material agglomeration over time and non-uniform heat distribution throughout the material within the reactor, by proposing the central receiver tube of FLCs as the dehydration reactor of the TCES system using ""CaSO4+H2O"" or ""SrBr2+H2O"" as the primary reactive materials, 2)integration of the solar collectors field and the TCES system leading to lowered capital and maintenance costs and increased overall efficiency, and3)significant temperature lifting of the stored solar heat during the hydration phase of the thermochemical material (heat intensification), via changing the exothermic reactions physical conditions, enabling the system for process heating at much higher temperatures which are otherwise not possible by an FLC system. With main hypothesis that the uniform flow of reactive material can effectively be controlled and helpful for its agglomeration and non-uniform heat distribution prevention, SOLTEC aims at laying the first stone of research on this technology and pushing the edges of the state-of-the-art through a) developing the theoretical principles of solar heat capturing/storing/intensification process, b) developing the optimal and compatible design of the FLCs for this, and c) techno-economic and environmental evaluation of the technology. The project will develop the fundamental theories and methods to design, optimize, and test this innovatively operating solar system." |
