How Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Plant Works?

The Concentrated solar thermal Power plant produces electricity from the heat from sun's rays. It's an effective source of large-scale energy production.

Firstly a solar farm is made up of heliostats. These are computer controlled mirrors which follow the movement of the sun in order to best reflect its rays towards a central point throughout the day. A solar farm can include from several hundred to several thousand heliostats which communicate with each other over wifi in order to optimize their yield.

I have made a non-working model of a concentrated solar thermal power tower plant to expain it's working in a better way. We have uploaded the making video in youtube, and have embedded the video in this page. Don't forget to comment.

Solar thermal power plant model 

The mirror pieces represents heliostats.

These heliostats reflect and concentrate sunlight onto a large heat exchanger called receiver that sits on top of a tower which located in the center of the solar farm. Within the receiver, fluid flows through the piping that forms the external walls. This fluid absorbs the heat from the concentrated sunlight. 

How to Make Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Plant Video 

In this technology the fluid utilised is molten salt containing chemical components whose thermal properties are of particular interest. It's an ideal heat capture medium because it maintains a wider operating temperature range in the liquid state allowing the system to operate at low pressure for superior and safe energy capture and storage.

How Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Tower Technology Works?

Cold Molten Salt flows Up 

The cold molten salt stored in a tank at the base of 

the tower have pumped up to the top where they are heated to very high temperature.

Hot molten salt flows down 

Then they go down to a second thermal storage tank, where the energy is stored in the form of high-temperature molten salt until the electricity is needed. This thermal storage tank can store this energy to maintain electricity production for several hours after sunset.

This technology leverages liquid molten salt as both the energy collection and the storage mechanism which allows it to separate energy collection from electricity generation.

When the electricity is required by the utility day or night..

Molten salt flows through steam generator 

water converting to steam 

When the electricity is required by the utility day or night the high-temperature molten salt flows from the thermal storage tank to the steam generator as water is piped in from the water storage tank to generate the steam.

Turns turbine generating electricity 

Once the hot molten salt is used to generate the steam the cool molten salt is then piped back into the cold storage tank where it will flow back up the receiver to be reheated as the process continues.

After the steam is used to drive the steam turbine it's condensed back to water and returned to the water holding tank from where it will be pumped back into the steam generator when needed. The result is a high-quality super-heated steam to drive the standard steam turbine at maximum efficiency to generate reliable nonintermittent electricity during peak demand hours.

The Molten salt makes it possible to store heat and therefore energy. This makes the plant operational day and night up to twenty-four hours a day.

The steam generation process is identical to the process used in conventional gas , coal or nuclear power plants except that is 100% renewable with zero harmful emissions or waste.

These plants provide on-demand, reliable electricity from a renewable source the Sun.

How to Make Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Tower Model

Heliostats are the building blocks of a CONCENTRATED SOLAR TECHNOLOGY. Watch the video carefully to learn how we constructed a heliostats model from reeper pieces, Aluminium sheet and mirror pieces. Take care while handling Glass pieces. The more heliostats you make the more it would be beautiful.

Step 1:

Cut small pieces of reeper as shown in the figure or video 

Fix Fisher/plugs to one end of both pieces 

Join two parts using screws 

Now it is flexible to move in two-dimension. 

Step 2:

Cut small pieces of Aluminium sheet dimensions 2''*0.5'' 

Cut small pieces of mirrors using glass cutter 

Take care while handling Glass. 

Now is the time to connect all the components together. 

Step 3:

Connect Aluminium pieces on the reeper

Carefully connect glass pieces on the reeper-aluminium arrangement. 

Step 4

Even In a real Power plant heliostats doesn't require any heavy foundation work. In this project we can use Hard boards, acp sheet etc to fix heliostats around the tower. 

Take 3*3F piece of acp 

Mark 3 circles with adequate displacement between heliostats. 

Use a handdrill to make 4mm holes 

Use Drill Carefully. 

Connect all 100 heliostats on a 3*3 feet ACP Sheet as shown in the Video. 

Step 5:

Now construct the tower, receiver, and other necessary lighting systems. 

Buy strip leds having different colors- red,green,white,blue 

Red for hot molten salt 

Green for cold molten salt 

White for steam

Blue for Water 

Stick all the strips on the project components. 

Connect wires using Soldering Iron 

Mini solar thermal power plant is Ready 

Mini Concentrated solar thermal power tower plant is Ready!

Now is the Time to Learn the working Principle behind Concentrating Solar power tower technology. Look at these diagrams, then carefully watch the second half of the video. Comment our opinion about my project.