Comparative investigation on two tank and cascade thermal storage for solar power plants

Abstract

The use of alternate energy has been increased nowadays due to the environmental threats associated with the fossil fuels. Solar energy is emerged out as the most popular alternate source of energy due to its ease of availability. The energy yield from Solar thermal power project can be characterised as variable because of the daily and seasonal variation of the solar field which directly affects the system efficiency. This concern associated with solar power plants can be eliminated with the use of thermal storage solar energy wherein the solar energy can be stored in daytime and can be releasedin the time no solar irradiations. There is different thermal storage can be used to store solar energy such as sensible heat thermal storage, latent heat thermal storage and chemicalheat thermal storage. The heat transfer fluids play an important role for the selection of thermal storage. The present work compares the performance of two tank thermal storage system and cascade thermal storage system for oil and molten salt as HTF. The efficiency of TES can be attained up to 88.2%with cascade storage which is higher by 7.66%in comparison to the two-tank storage system.