One piece ceramic heat exchanger for concentrating solar power electric plants

摘要

Using additive manufacturing techniques, a ceramic heat exchanger was optimized for a concentrating solar power (CSP) electric power plant with a corrosive molten salt at atmospheric pressure as the solar field heat transfer fluid and supercritical carbon dioxide at 200 bar as the power block fluid. Temperatures ranged from 750 degrees C to 540 degrees C. The plant heat exchanger was optimized for heat transfer and stress using 1 m(3) modules arranged in parallel. Heat transfer was optimized using COMSOL Multiphysics software resulting in a unique semi-elliptical cross section for the fluid flow channels in a counter-flow configuration. Counter-flow was made possible through additive manufacturing of the fluid headers as part of each modular heat exchanger thus producing the entire module as a single piece and minimizing cost. Using reasonable parametric values, a heat exchanger module was optimized to 0.5 MW/m(3), and a section of it was manufactured including the fluid headers. Parametric studies showed the potential for a module to reach 3.5 MW/m(3). (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.