How can we turn 300ºC solar energy into cheap electricity
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- The novelty of this invention (from MIT) is a new type of heat storages which are several tens of times cheaper than modern analogues. More detailed description of the invention: • 100 GWh Crushed Rock H...
This type of solar power plants can win the competition from thermal power plants, and now the victory of solar energy becomes a reality thanks to the following invention of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I remind you that these mirrors focus solar radiation into this receiver which is a tube for the circulation of liquid thermal oil, and therefore solar energy heats the oil to a temperature of almost 400 ºC.
This hot oil from all receivers forms a large flow in such pipes, and recently the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proposed turning this oil flow into rain. This oil rain must take place in a gigantic trench of this cross section and about a kilometer long. This trench is filled with gravel with a total mass of almost 2,000,000 tons, which is about the same as in such a rock almost 100 meters high.
So, the oil rain starts here. Drops of the hot oil transfer their thermal energy to the gravel and move towards this puddle of colder oil which moves to the receivers for reheating, and so on.
So, this is a heat storage with a large mass of gravel which has a temperature of about 350 ºC, and we can take this thermal energy to generate steam for a turbine with an electric generator. We can take the thermal energy not only during the day, but also at night, and we take the energy through the rain of oil, and its drops are heated by the hot gravel and collect in this oil puddle. This hot oil is taken to generate steam for a turbine, as a result of which the oil loses its thermal energy, and then it becomes the oil rain again, heats up, and so on.
Of course, we know that many of these solar power plants already have such heat storages which are filled with similar molten salt. But these heat storages are several dozen times more expensive than this proposal from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, the high cost of these molten salt heat storages means that they only store energy for a few hours of turbine operation in the evening and at night. At the same time, the low cost of our stone heat storage allows us to make it very large, and therefore it can store energy not only for the coming night, but also for non-solar days.
Moreover, we can charge our gigantic heat storages with summer thermal energy, and they will store it until the winter months. That is why our solar power plants can be independent of the weather, and work just as well in non-solar winters as they do in sunny summers. And the quality of our solar electricity will be better than the quality of electricity from thermal power plants which cannot turn their turbines on and off as cheaply and quickly as we can.
Nevertheless, we must win over thermal power plants not only in terms of the quality of electricity, but also in terms of the cost of electricity, and these are the conditions of our victory. This formula requires that we must produce high quality solar electricity at this cost, 5 cent / kWh, and let's analyze whether we can do it.
For example, let's pay attention to this requirement that the thermal energy from our solar heaters must be very cheap, at 0.5 cent / kWh. I remind you that my RUclips channel is trying to find and explore various solar heaters that seem to be able to provide thermal energy at the cost of 0.5 cent / kWh to heat thermal oil with a temperature of several hundred degrees. My videos from this year have already covered at least 4 types of solar heaters we need, and now I am preparing a few more types. My research aims to prove to you that we can find several dozen types that can give us very cheap solar energy which is many times cheaper than heat from natural gas or other traditional energy sources.
Now let's analyze whether this type of heat storage from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suitable for our purpose. Unfortunately, this total construction cost of our heat storage looks hard to achieve. In addition, it has large heat losses through this soil and towards groundwater, and these heat losses can significantly degrade this total efficiency.
Can you make a cheap DIY solar panel tutorial ?
I worked at SEGS plants for 31 years.
One issue is using gravel. It must be clean and not deteriorate or it will constantly ruin your pump seals.
Salt has not been used in parabolic trough’s on commercial scale as it freezes at such high temps it is impossible to deal with maintenance wise. It is a challenge enough with the HTF that freezes at 54f here in the Mohave desert. The trough plants that do use heat exchangers that take hot oil from the field to these heat exchangers that heat the salt up. The salt tanks and all piping involved need to be kept above the salts freezing point which is around 400f at all times or it can be very bad.
There was a company out of Australia that tried salt in troughs but forget names. Met them in convention in Las Vegas, Nevada a decade or longer ago. Never heard of a commercial plant made.
ruclips.net/video/oiPSy2bKZkE/видео.html
How are the pumps sealed? With rubber? What is on the gravel that binds with the seal?
@@mookfaru835 Sodium filled exhaust valves, that are fully sealed just like the exhaust valves in the Spitfire.
Have a good one.
Ciao...!
Sounds like the gravel needs to be the largest size rocks/stones should be used, rinsed and with some type of filtration to keep sediment out. Does the gravels cemistry breakdown in the oil over time?
A commercial plant in New Mexico or one of the western US states did shut down for too high in maintenace costs. But the company is thought to have mishandled the finances. After spending all the government grants and paying the executives big bonuses the losses where more than the company could keep paying and compete with the market rates
Reduce thermal losses by encasing gravel/sand in a coffer made of styroaircrete. Styroaircrete is cheaper than concrete and more insulative.
When the time comes to rebuild UA cities destroyed by war, your designs for district heating must be implemented on a wide scale for energy independence!
Great work! Keep it coming :) It’s very much appreciated
Excellent job Sergiy. Appreciated.
The design in this video is hardly new and that is to be expected.
Thermal storage is probably the method that makes most sense for storing energy, particularly for solar farms that use a vast array of mirrors on heliostats that reflect sunlight on a single collector that uses a medium which is typically molten sodium to collect and transport the heat to directly or indirectly power turbines that generate electricity.
This is probably the cheapest and most efficient way to store solar energy at any power station, far better and cheaper in almost every case than chemical batteries. Unlike chemical batteries, thermal storage is based on well known physics and methods developed over thousands of years dating back to cave men. The physics of thermal storage are well known and integral to many industries, and seen even in backyards and homes. The only drawbacks to thermal storage is that compared to chemical batteries it is large in volume and mass so is not suitable for mobile applications.
The small wrinkle in this video is to add an alternate storage medium in crushed rock which is questionable. The only likely purpose would be to extend the time of storage compared to molten sodium, but that would need to be analyzed and evaluated. Molten sodium is consistently at about 600 degrees Fahrenheit which is plenty sufficient to directly or indirectly power any method to convert to electricity (eg turbine, heat pump, Stirling engine) and is one of the cheapest, most plentiful and available elements in existence. If extending time of charged capacity, it's likely easier and simpler to just increase the volume of molten sodium rather than use an alternate medium.
As for thermal storage losses, this is one of the most well known and continually developed areas of applied physics. All around us we can see examples of methods to control heat transfer and prevention and its opposite when desired, to transfer heat away when desired. The physics of heat insulation and isolation are so well known that there are many methods that have been created for practically every situation. I would generally recommend for metropolitan thermal storage lining the "bathtub" with common kiln bricks, perhaps a few layers if desired. Air gaps or vacuum gaps are also common in preventing heat transfer, design a layer in there as well if desired. Or, if heat losses aren't particularly important relative to the amount of heat being collected maybe less engineering is needed. Remember, an analysis would only have to ensure that enough storage is required for power generation over some number of consecutive days without sunlight... Maybe 3 days? 7 days? Surely few parts of the world would remain in darkness for 14 days (maybe near the poles and far from the equator).
In any case, I look forward to the day when all those batteries used for metropolitan energy storage are junked and recycled to recover their valuale rare minterals to make new batteries, and are properly replaced with thermal storage which would be lower cost in every respect and likely last far longer (maybe hundreds of years) than the batteries they're replacing.
I look forward to your experiments with heat storage.
Hello Sergiy, thank you for posting this interesting content on your channel. I find it quite interesting and inspiring. I would like to make a little contribution. At 6:20 you mention consecutive shells of pipes at different temperatures which would transfer heat from soil surrounding the thermal storage. Actually, this would increase losses from your thermal storage. Heat flow is a product of temperature differences, so if you cool soil surrounding the thermal mass, the amount that leaves the thermal mass through conduction will increase. Just my two cents!
Great Video. Thnx
Strong winds? Typhoons? Extremely heavy rain, hail and snow?
Degrading with dust, on efficiency, and chemical-physically erosion?
But what about the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. The Temperature drop across the turbine is small therefore not very efficient.
maybe an investigation on "(bacteria, organism or what is it)" which is developing in compost. maybe this could help in winter.
Look up Jean Pain compost water heater
@John Xina: Thank you for pointing out Jean Pain. For me unfortunately this method alone is not enough. That method involves a lot of work and doesn't seem to be a long-term method.
Maybe a deep dive to understand how the heat is produce inside the compost. Then can be this heat in another way produced(but also environment friendly)? ...and... of course cheap.
@@RPI_4 I don't know what you're looking for but compost heat is fairly basic and simple... You need sufficient (but not too much) water in a large enough volume (minimum 1 yard or meter cube, nothing smaller) with enough access to oxygen in the center of the pile for aerobic bacteria to multiply. As the bacteria consumes the organic material, heat is generated and released which can exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit but should not reach boiling. This is why the pile has to be at least 1 cubic meter in size, anything smaller will lose too much heat and your chances of success plummet. Air is a critical ingredient in the process which is why the pile should be turned every week or so and at the end of approximately 3 months, you'll have a completed pile of compost where even small branches should have decomposed.
When you calculate the price per kilowatt, do you include the turbine? You do need something to turn that heat into electricity?
I think of a variant that produces demineralized water in large volumes, in many places this has become a serious problem.
Generate steam, transport it for a few kilometers, generate energy along the way, reheat the water, repeat the process, at the "end of the line" use soil to transform the steam into water, the heated ground can be used for other purposes (in theory the soil could stay above 50 degrees and it would still be efficient).
The stored water can still be used as a "hydraulic" battery before being used for human or industrial supply.
In other words, they would be long lines of artificial rivers, generating energy along the way.
The big cost is in the transportation line.
the solar plant as It has been on the market since about 1975
the problem of Such a system loss of energy we learn
And that's why it hasn't been properly profitable yet.
There has been experimentation with sand granite and salt to store energy you still have to build an insulated one around where they should be stored because otherwise the energy loss is too great and it costs to build it.
The next problem is the oil that will transport the heat must be able to withstand heat and not put deposition in the pipes and be environmentally safe Such oil type costs
the next thing is the absorption and release of the stored energy can only happen at a certain speed since the conductivity of the materials will act as a barrier
thanks for a great video. that there has been research into systems like that for the past 40 years;
and It is only now has begun to be profitable due to Our situation on the world stage
at present we have another problem that Danish wind turbines produce so much energy when the wind blows that sometimes we had to stop the wind turbines so as not to overload the grid and the German grid is not strong enough to drain it over energy then we have also experimented with seeing if it can be put into granite shards for storage and effort is spent on developing power to x for alternative fuels for Transport
So Denmark is working on him producing about 45 gigawatts by 2030 so we will be a supplier To Germany and other neighboring countries, the energy will come from wind turbines and solar panels.
It can be even cheaper if white paint from Purdue university is used. Painting fabrics , pottery , wood and concrete for collectors ( concave sursaface).
ok so let say we have thermal storage then how we can put this thermal energy to usage , like producing electricity. let say we have steam turbine then how can we produce steam for it through this thermal storage heat.
Looks a lot like Glasspoint in Oman, that started up in 2016, but shutdown in 2020 due to low energy prices at that time
Glasspoint makes steam. Steam is used in oil extraction.
A Danish guy build houses years ago with heat storage underneath so they had heat for all year he used dry sand and 2 m2 pr square meters building. But with a good insulated building I thing it could be lower.
(Perhaps that guy from the Netherlands? But there was an old man) Please give a link to that Danish guy
@@sergiyyurko8668 sorry I can't it was verbal information I resived from a project companion 20years ago.
But I just maby have som other information you might can use for your own and global benerfit. I certanly do in my own opertunerty searching mind soon if desteny will in my mining place way into Sahara 😎🤗 but more about all of that in near future I hope.
What I want to point you in direction of is this channel
ruclips.net/video/W1K2CMRyDrw/видео.html
Becourse he run his Thesla turbine in vacuum with extreme efecency with only 40 degree celios difrence on the water.
But thanks for the question sorry I couldn't help. With that.
Hope to press your hand one day when the world is a litle safer. Will soon go in one month radio cilence. Because of the distance 😱😄. Will be f.. Nice
Meanwhile in the ukraine.
How do you deal with sun tracking in your devices? Any recommendations for sun tracking in small cheap projects?
I prefer hydrogen batteries.
A load of oil contaminated gravel ?
Where i can see the PDF files in the video?
I would like to add that thermal storage is even useful to store energy from conventional PV and wind power plants, when there is surplus in production then instead of dissipating the energy into nothing, this surplus energy could be stored in those CSP thermal storage
As well as grid power as a backup for long cold nights if the BTUs get below a 6-7 day low energy threshold, grid power could be a secondary or third backup.
@@terrafirma9328 What is grid power?
Converting electric power to thermal power storage via dissipation is just wasteful: it's straightforward thermodynamics, illustrated in practice by heat pumps with high (>>1) COP's. At When there's too much electric power production, at least make some hydrogen or ammonia or whatever! You'll have some spare heat from such a process too!
I expected chloride salts not nitrate to keep the fire danger down. If that is what everyone uses, I don't like them.
How do you turn the steam into electricity. You have suggestions on inexpensive steam turbines?
Use a steam engine... instead of a steam turbine
Steam turbines are very "old school."
Newer methods which are very efficient include heat pumps and Stirling engines, both which work based simply on differences of temperature and do not rely on pressure like a turbine.
@@roderickseed9427 Do you have any models or links to ones available?
Mike brown steam,tinytech India...old ones on eBay...
You can blow the steam through a large hydraulic gear with a bit of added oil(seals might not like the temperature)
A large turbocharger...problem is high output shaft speed
Hydraulic gear motor
Is there a way for thermal energy storage? I would say for Europe mostly middle and north Europe sand could be a good source. You can heat up sand too 500° C or even 1000° C
Hi Yurki! Im also preparing a flat solar concentrator with hot glue and glass mirrors on a sandwich panel . I plan to mount it on a small cart and it has a focal length of 2,5m in the focus I will mount an oven for baking and preparing other foods
How much energy per kilogram it can store?
About 20-50 kWh per ton gravel (= 0.25 kWh / (K * ton))
@@sergiyyurko8668 How many households would that supply with electricity, including to charge an EV car?
Instead of gravel one can use sand as thermal storage. I think some company in Finland or Netherlands is using it.
Straw bales to line the pit is a cheap way to insulate, although they must be sealed in EPDM to protect them against water. And of course then the working temperature can not be as high. Maybe higher with an inner lining of expanded clay or vermiculite. Boys, girls and in betweens: this all should have been sorted out ages ago.
May be foam glass or perlite could be used for insulation too. Or a combination with ice heating technologie.
Straw would be crushed by the weight of the tank? Or a big tank with support legs of some sort and regular type insolation? Ground temperature wants to be 60f and is relentless , won’t pause if there is no sun for days or equipment break down.
@@gordybishop2375 there is very interesting literature on straw bale houses and other structures. Since baling began in the late 1800’s straw bales have been used as literal building blocks, especially in Nebraska if my memory serves me well. Bales are very insulating. R=6? I don’t know exactly. To know what weight they can bear as a single (or double) layer of insulation under a heat tank it should suffice to ask someone who is in the know about these things what pressure a baler needs to make one.
@@Calligraphybooster great for house walls but never seen it under the foundation where it has to support the entire weight of the storage tank and it’s contents. I would think all the air gaps that make it a good insulator would crushed away. Even when styrofoam is used for houses it is on the walking surfaces usually or on walls…not a tank full of rocks and salt or HTF.
@@gordybishop2375 yes, but it is a load very well spread. Think e.g. of the weight of a loaded 747 is 910.000 lbs or 412 metric tons. Spread out over 5600 square feet of wing area that means 162,5 lbs per square foot, (or about 80kgs on an area of 31,5 x31,5 cm.) This means that the average male exerts a greater load on a given supporting surface by just standing on it than plays on that same area of the wing of a 747 in flight.
Doing such things in metrics btw is very simple: 1 ltr of water equals 1 kg. 1 kg is pulled down by gravity with a force of 10 Newtons. A liter is 1/10th x1/10th x1/10th of a meter btw. So 1 cubic meter of water is equal to 1000 liters and equals 1 metric ton. Furthermore 1 meter x 1N /second = 1 Watt, so you also easily express horsepower and electrical power in these terms.
Why not use giant batteries? Surely they're more energy dense than this.
And more expensive.
The comment section of the link you provided is turned off
But I don't quite understand how this works. Are you saying that the mirrors are focused on heating rocks up which are then sprayed with oil but then is collected to be sent to heat up water to drive a turbine with steam?
He's saying the light is reflected to a focal point which is very hot and that heats oil which is then sprayed over the rocks or sand to heat it. The oil drains through and cycles around again and again. Somehow the heat from the rocks or sand is regained by heating water to steam which turns the turbine to generate electricity. Nothing is burned!!!!!! No rare minerals or metals are used!!!!!!! It's cheap!!!!!!! It's not dangerous to the surrounding environment, except for the hot oil which has to be contained. And, PVs can also generate electricity directly from the sunlight to be used or stored in batteries.
downside uses water for steam
The thing that's always puzzled me about parabolic reflectors used in these type of solar plants is why they're arranged North - South and follow the Sun during the day. Why not East-West, and follow the Sun during the seasons?
Parabolic reflectors should be mounted on heliostats that follow the path of the sun across the sky no matter the time of day or season.
Circular parabolic reflectors need to be pointed exactly while "trough" style reflectors only need to be aligned along one axis... the other axis due to the parabolic reflector will always reflect sunlight on the collector because that's the nature and advantage of a parabolic reflector that it will capture sunlight from numerous angles.
HEAT CAOACITY FIRST WATER THEN ROCK.
I think the 20$ cost per ton is feasible if you built big enough near the source of the gravel.
Also not everyplace has groundwater running so close.
What kind of environmental effect will it have on the geologic surface or beneath the grave. ?
There are numerous examples of solar farms worldwide, particularly in China which have augmented their benefit by growing crops and livestock below solar panels.
Great to see your videos again.
Can you get cheap small scale turbines?
Better to use a steam engine.... cheaper and simple...but not as efficient
I still dont get what is the new invention here?
A new type of heat storage. You can find old oil-gravel storages, but they are too expensive due to the large volume of oil (MIT suggests a drastic reduction in this volume of oil)
@@sergiyyurko8668 The objective for using gravel is never explained. I've speculated that it's to extend the time energy is stored, but introducing an alternative medium like gravel is likely a poor decision. Assuming that the most common medium which is molten sodium is already part of the design, simply increasing the volume of molten sodium in the system is likely the cheapest, most efficient and simplest option to increase capacity which would also extend the amount of time energy would be available in sufficient amount to power whatever means is used to produce electricity. To verify this, of course you need more details of the system for concrete analysis, but the cheapness of sodium and the simplicity of just increasing the volume of sodium is hard to improve on. It should also be recognized that most places in the world don't go more than a few days of degraded sunlight unless you're located far from the equator, so "long term" storage shouldn't ordinarily need to be more than a week or so at most, or a couple weeks if one wanted availability approaching 100%.
Depends on the cost of the gravel, or medium. Depends on the cost of the pipes and how many. Depends on the cost of each component as well as repairs and maintenance for 50 year average. The cheaper each componet resource, the cheaper to recover cost, then there is freesources like on site gravel, on site dirt, old tires etc. In Arizona old tires and a 20-30ft mound of dirt with an adobe shell is used as the thermal solar collector, no trough mirrors, no parobolic dishes. Sometimes less is more
@@terrafirma9328 Is that way of collecting heat suitable for other locations? Is there a name for that method?
@@markhathaway9456 It varys by location. It's called many things, Earth ship, Earth home is a couple. It can be suitable for comparison. Many factors are involved though that have to be weighed. Regulations and your relation with local regulators if they get involved approvals are many times more difficult from the closed minded. If you can get by undetected it saves lots of expense and time. Doing the majority work yourself also helps save both by not involving too many trouble makers in on your savings who may try to exploit or extort from you.
I asked in an older video but didn't get the answer.
What kind of transparent film are you using on your collector? The one in front of the collector pipe.
Commercial tubes use glass and vacuum inside. These type of heat collection elements ( HCE ) have been used in trough plants since SEGS in the early 1980s
@@gordybishop2375 I don't think you understand my question.
ruclips.net/video/kD6muOaEl7Q/видео.html
in this video in the beginning and at 1:49 you can see there is some sort of transparent film/foil protecting the collector tubes from the wind.
I'm wondering what is that material.
@@phlexy I was answering the question as if it was the same as this video.
Usually my experiments use cheap polyethylene films (These are just experiments, not prototypes). But recently I also bought a sheet of thin polycarbonate
@@sergiyyurko8668 thanks, next fall, winter i will try some of my ideas, as cheap as possible.
Can someone speack english please
Why, you can't even type in english🤣
Go away troll