Starting from the R&D experience acquired, within the Italian context, in the field of the development of new technologies for solar energy exploitation, structural design criteria have been selected here to define a guideline for steel structures design and assessment of components of parabolic-trough solar concentrators. The main codes of practice used in Italy and in the European community have been considered and design criteria chosen to find a compromise between requirements of rules that should be followed precisely and costs. Loads, actions, and more generally, the whole design procedure has been considered in agreement with the limit state method; a new approach is critically and carefully proposed to use this method in designing and testing “special structures,” such as the one analyzed here (e.g., wind and snow actions are evaluated and newly interpreted according to both the angular position of the collectors and the characteristic effects). A method for evaluating variable loads is proposed to integrate current Italian and European rules, and a dimensional reduction for some elements due to the limit state design approach is underlined.
Thermal energy storage (TES) systems for concentrated solar power plants are essential for the convenience of renewable energy sources in terms of energy dispatchability, economical aspects and their larger use. TES systems based on the use of concrete have been demonstrated to possess good heat exchange characteristics, wide availability of the heat storage medium and low cost. Therefore, the purpose of this work was the development and characterization of a new concrete-based heat storage material containing a concrete mix capable of operating at medium–high temperatures with improved performance. In this work, a small amount of shape-stabilized phase change material (PCM) was included, thus developing a new material capable of storing energy both as sensible and latent heat. This material was therefore characterized thermally and mechanically and showed increased thermal properties such as stored energy density (up to +7%, with a temperature difference of 100 °C at an average operating temperature of 250 °C) when 5 wt% of PCM was added. By taking advantage of these characteristics, particularly the higher energy density, thermal energy storage systems that are more compact and economically feasible can be built to operate within a temperature range of approximately 150–350 °C with a reduction, compared to a concrete-only based thermal energy storage system, of approximately 7% for the required volume and cost.
The paper summarizes the results obtained by an experimental and computational study jointly performed by ENEA and University of Pisa. The study is aimed at assessing the capabilities of an available thermal-hydraulic system code in simulating natural circulation in a loop in which the working fluid is the eutectic lead-bismuth alloy as in the Italian proposal for Accelerator Driven System (ADS) reactor concepts. Experiments were performed in the CHEOPE facility installed at the ENEA Brasimone Research Centre and pre- and post-test calculations were run using a version of the RELAP5/Mod.3.2, purposely modified to account for Pb-Bi liquid alloy properties and behavior. The main results obtained by the experimental tests and by the code analyses are presented in the paper providing material to discuss the present predictive capabilities of transient and steady-state behavior in liquid Pb-Bi systems.
The increase of carbon dioxide emissions is the most important contributor to climate change. A better use of produced energy, increasing systems efficiency and using renewable sources, can limit them. A key technological issue is to integrate a thermal energy storage (TES). It consists in stocking thermal energy through the heating/cooling of a storage material for future needs. Among various technologies, latent heat TES (LHTES) provides high energy storage density at constant temperature during melting/solidification of storage media. The bottleneck in the use of typical PCMs is their low thermal conductivity. To improve the heat exchange between heat transfer fluid and PCM, three methods are possible and here experimentally analyzed: conductivity systems enhancements; convective flows promotion in liquid phase; and improvement of PCM thermal properties including small amounts of nanoparticles. CFD models were used to evaluate physical phenomena that are crucial for optimized LHTES systems design. The study of the heat exchange mode allowed some useful indications to achieve an optimized LHTES, taking advantage by convective flows and conductivity promotion systems. The use of NEPCM, to maximize the stored energy density and realize compact systems, makes necessary the improvement of its thermal diffusivity. These will be the future research topics.
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