Thermal Engineering

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Browsing Thermal Engineering by Author "Aklilu, Tesfaye"

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    Modeling Simulation and Performance Evaluation of Parabolic Dish Solar Power Plant
    (Addis Ababa University, 2011-01) Aklilu, Tesfaye; Abebayehu, Assefa (PhD)
    A solar parabolic dish electric power generation system is one option for a high temperature solar concentrator that is capable to achieve a high system performance. This results from the fact that it combines an excellent concentrator, a very efficient cavity receiver and a high performance heat engine. The Stirling dish system produces electricity using concentrated solar thermal energy to drive a Stirling engine. The system utilizes a parabolic mirror equipped with dual-axis tracking to concentrate solar radiation onto a thermal receiver integrated in the Stirling engine. The receiver consists of a heat exchanger designed to transfer the absorbed solar energy to the working fluid, typically, hydrogen. The Stirling engine then converts the absorbed thermal energy to mechanical power by expanding the gas in a piston-cylinder in a manner similar to a gas or diesel engine. The linear motion is converted to a rotary motion to turn a generator to produce electricity. The electrical output of the system is proportional to the size of the reflector, its optical losses and the efficiencies of the Stirling engine and the generator. This thesis outlines the theory and models for the collector, receiver, and Stirling engine, the parasitic power. An energy prediction model was created for solar Stirling dish systems to predict the location dependent long term performance of these systems. The model analyzes the performance of the parabolic mirror, receiver, Stirling engine, and the parasitic power consumption to predict the net power produced. The power plant analyzed in this paper has a capacity of generating 10MW electric power. The performance prediction models were implemented in EES and TRNSYS and include location dependent properties that affect the performance based on the direct normal insolation, ambient temperature, density of air (altitude), sun elevation angle, and the wind speed. The cost and financial analysis is made for the Dish System. Solar Advisor Model is used to make this analysis under Kombolcha weather condition. This analysis is used to determine the different costs associated with the power plant. The cash flow for the 30 years of operation of the power plant is also shown. I