Abstract:
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technology offers an interesting potential for future power
generation and research on CSP systems of all types, particularly those with parabolic trough
solar system has been attracting a lot of attention recently.
In this paper, both energy and exergy performances of solar power plant, under different design
and operating conditions are investigated. The E-draw Max and Engineering Equation Software
(EES) software are used to model the power system and simulations prospectively. In the state-ofthe-art PTCs, technologies are considered to set the design parameters used in the modeling of
the solar field. Therminol VP-1 is the heat transfer fluid on PTC similarly Supercritical Carbon
dioxide (S-CO2) as working fluid for closed Bryton cycle and R123 for Organic Rankine Cycle.
The combination of S-CO2 closed Brayton cycle and organic Rankine cycle (ORC) integrated with
Solar Parabolic Trough Collectors (SPTC) has been used to produce power, in which S-CO2 cycle
and ORC are arranged as a topping and bottoming cycle. The uses of S-CO2 as the working fluid,
and organic Rankine cycles that are employed to recover the waste heat from the Brayton cycle.
Now the power cycle system are assessed thermodynamically both the first and second law
viewpoints. In thermodynamics, closed Brayton and ORC power cycle in the heat exchanger one
and condenser sections, where the maximum exergy destruction and energy loss occurred
respectively.
Furthermore, the effects of varying some design and operating conditions on the energy and exergy
performance of the PTCs and the S-CO2 closed Brayton combined with ORC power cycle are
investigated. These parameters include Direct Normal Irradiance, Pressure Ratio, and Gas
turbine inlet temperature. Subsequently, the resultant impacts of changing these parameters on
the overall solar power plant energy and exergy efficiencies are examined. The energy and exergy
efficiencies of the power cycle are found to be 53.7% and 60.59%, respectively. Thus, the overall
combined CSP efficiency reached 13.7% at the pressure ratio of 2.5 and 850 W/m
2
solar radiation.
