Apparatus and method for high efficiency fixed target solar thermal concentrator power plants

Abstract

A fixed target solar thermal tower design is provided that utilizes a low number of collector modules (32, 172, 191), e.g. 5 to 30, mounted on solar-tracking mechanisms. The collector modules may be rotatable so as to reflect incident sunlight onto a target receiver (1200, 192) mounted on a tower (31, 171), and substantially all of the collector modules for a given tower may be located in a rectangular area that extends polewards from the tower by a distance of approximately three times the height h of the target receiver and that is approximately h wide. Each collector module may have a plurality of reflectors (42, 43, 194, 201, 202, 203) that are angled so as to reflect incident light generally towards a common point on the target receiver. Multiple such solar thermal tower plants may be collocated and ganged together to provide higher overall power output.

Description

[0001] Cross References to Related Applications [0002] This application claims the benefit of 2 U.S. priority claims, U.S. Provisional Patent Application 61 / 814,765, filed April 22, 2013, and U.S. Provisional Patent Application 61 / 892,660, filed October 18, 2013, All of them are hereby incorporated by reference. [0003] Technical area [0004] The invention relates to a concentrating solar thermal power plant. In particular, in certain embodiments, the present invention proposes novel variable concentration ratio solar collectors with tracking mechanisms and 1-D or 2-D modular fixed thermal receivers and their geometries . These configurations provide high heat conversion efficiencies. Background technique [0005] Solar thermal conversion involves the redirection of solar radiation to a large area site such that the redirected solar radiation strikes a smaller thermal receiver. Redirection of sunlight is most commonly achieved with a large number of reflectors. Th...

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Problems solved by technology

However, conventional tower systems have some disadvantages compared to conventional movable target systems,: 1) The average light cosine loss is large, since both reflectors and receivers are rarely in line with the sun; this loss can be as large as a tower solar thermal power plant 23%, and even large in linear Fresnel plants; 2) in the case of tower solar thermal plants, in order to keep this solar concentration ratio large, the overall cost is low enough, a large number of reflector fields is necessary, e.g., usually Hundreds or thousands of reflectors, so that the light attenuation is very significant in the air, which is extremely harmful in places with turbid atmosphere (or light concentration by particles in the atmosphere); 3) In the case of 1D, compared to 1D trough collector (with moving target), the actual optical concentration ratio is greatly reduced

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