Design and calculation of a new storage tank for concentrating solar power plant

Concentrating solar power plant coupling with thermal energy storage is a popular technology during the solar application process. A multitude of researches focus on improving heat transfer performance of the whole system for getting the higher efficiency and lower cost. In this paper, a new storage tank for concentrating solar power has been designed, and the mathematical model of one-dimensional unsteady state heat conduction in cylindrical coordinates has been established and validated. Also, the charge time and the temperature of the tank have been investigated in the designing conditions based on this model. The results show that the new storage tank has a superior performance for the system in the charge period. The charge time from unsteady state to steady state heat conduction for the tank is about 9923 s. It can be found that there is a relatively good agreement of about 18.9% for the charge time between the mathematical model and the reference. The curve of the temperature versus the charge time for different thermal properties of the materials based on the model of this paper has been investigated. The results can provide a good reference for designing, operating, and energy-saving of thermal energy storage for concentrating solar power plants. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.