Thermo-economic evaluation of solar boiler power plant

Today, the world is turning to use renewable energy to solve the problems of fuel shortage and pollution due to CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuels. In this study, parabolic trough solar collectors (PTC) with two types of heat transfer fluids HTF are used to investigate the performance of a retrofitted steam power plant using solar energy. A thermo-economic analysis was performed for a 10 MW simple steam power plant with different boiler pressure from 10 to 100 bar and located in the city of Basra in Iraq which receives high levels of solar radiation. Basra's weather conditions are used to simulate the solar-assisted regenerative system using a parabolic trough collector (PTC). According to the system analysis, it was found that increasing the boiler pressure reduces the area required for the PTC heater for constant power output. For 10 bar operating pressure the required PTC area is 64233,562 m2 while for 100 bar operating pressure the required PTC area is 42907.59 m2. Also, it was estimated that the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) decreased with increasing operating pressure. The decrease in LCOE for PV1 heating fluid is 43.25% and the decrease in LCOE is 43.16% for the pressure range from 10 to 100 bar.