A comprehensive review of solar tower CSP systems using TES and molten salts

Abstract

The world demand for clean energy has increased significantly due to global population growth and economic expansion and significant investments have been recently conducted to rise electrical power generation capacity from renewable sources. Concentrating solar power (CSP) plants offer dispatchable power by integrating thermal energy storage (TES) and their costs have been reducing significantly in the last years. There are currently four CSP technologies: Linear Fresnel reflectors, parabolic trough collectors, central tower receiver, and parabolic dish systems. Nowadays, molten salts are used both as the primary heat transfer fluid (HTF) and as TES medium, in order to increase the maximum operating temperatures and the CSP plant efficiency. The contribution of the present paper is to summarise the current status of the existing 26 operational or under development CSP plants using central towers with incorporated molten salt TES. Furthermore, the global trends regarding this currently promising CSP installation configuration are highlighted.

KEYWORDS:

• CSP
• TES
• sensible heat storage
• solar tower
• molten salts

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by PUC Minas [grant number PIBIC/PIBIT-2021/276561]; Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) [grant number 001]; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) [grant numbers 444864/202-2, 309807/2019-0, and 315533/2020]; and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG) [grant numbers PPM-00650-18 and PPM-00662-18].