Energy has recently become a highly publicized and politicized subject. Supply and demand are generally recognized problems. One of the promising alternatives for future development is solar energy as a source of electric power. Energy self sufficiency and environmental superiority are the great attractions of solar power.
The purpose of this research is to provide an overview of a solar power plant, and then for a selected power plant model to analyze the performance and to obtain the first-hand design data for later use.
The system selected in this paper consists of Sandia Parabolic trough as a collector-receiver system of line focusing type, thermal storage tank, heat exchanger and turbine generator component. The collectors track the sun in one degree of freedom and the working fluid is chosen as F-113 due to its law boiling point (155.5℃ at 210psia). The cylindrical storage tank is buried underground and has 6 compartments which are filled with pressurized water of different temperature for better efficiency. The heat exchanger is simple counter flow type and a preheater is installed with the condenser part. The plant is rated at 1 MW and is operated using some typical Weather data of Seoul in 1978.
Theoretical component analysis is made and put together to simulate the overall power plant. As a result, a preliminary design data for given power plant output such as the required number of collector receiver units, the flow rate of working fluid, the size of thermal storage tank are obtained.
The simulation is capable of presenting the excessive number hours for power plant operation after the collector-receiver components are shut down due to sun-set or bad weather condition.
