Solar power research heats up. 🧐 engineering
Concentrated solar power has the potential to lower the cost of renewable energy and provide highly available dispatchable energy at any time of the day.National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Department of Energy are both working on the next generation of CPS facilities as part of the DoE's plans to reach an energy cost goal of 5 cents per kWh,In the road to achieve this goal, U.S.
The DoE has identified three key areas of innovation for CPS: storing heat in liquids like molten salts, in sand-like particles, and also in gases. Though the U.S. government agency decided to focus most of its funding into particle-based storage, it also provided funding for NREL to run a two-year liquid molten salt research program. pipes and heat exchangers.
A few practical challenges have stood in the way when it comes to molten salt CPS. For example, the material is corrosive and can cause damage to holding tanks during the process of transferring heat energy. However, according to Craig Turchi, who leads thermal energy science and technologies research at NREL, the researchers have"
actually solved that problem by and large. NREL and partners did a lot of great science on the salt chemistry — how to purify it, how to make it relatively noncorrosive if you control the chemistry, and we demonstrated that in the lab."In its bid to harness molten salts, NREL decided to use chloride salts as opposed to the nitrate salts typically used in other molten salt applications. The company explained that nitrate salts display a greater level of stability under extreme temperatures.
The DoE awarded NREL $2 million to build a prototype tank that utilizes extra insulation to keep the molten salts — which freeze at 752°F — at a high temperature. This, alongside the work NREL has carried out on the corrosion problem, means we might be a step closer to viable molten salt CPS.between 2010 and 2019, and the price will only continue to fall. AdvertisementKerry Rippy, NREL expert in inorganic chemistry,"there are multiple potential avenues for this research to be valuable.
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