Design of a Parabolic Trough Collector Solar Field for a Pilot CO2 Capture Plant from Natural Gas Combined Cycle Power Plant Flue Gas

A parabolic trough collector solar field was designed to supply the heat needed to regenerate the CO2-rich monoethanolamine in a solar-assisted carbon capture system. Process design modeling was performed for 90% of the CO2 removal from 1% of the flue gas produced by a 255 MWe natural gas combined cycle power plant. Calculations with and without 24 h of thermal energy storage by increasing the solar collector size needed and providing a buffer vessel to store hot heat transfer fluid were performed. A dynamic analysis of the solar field using the hourly solar forecast was performed to investigate how heat transfer fluid mass flow changes during January and June to maintain the desired parabolic solar field outlet temperature needed for CO2 reboiler operation. The calculations provided here present an explicit method to calculate relevant solar field design parameters that can be scaled up and used in solar energy-assisted gas capture processes.