Advances in Process Modelling and Simulation of Parabolic Trough Power Plants: A Review

Abstract

The common design of thermal power plants is fundamentally oriented towards achieving a high-process performance, with market demands necessitating enhanced operational stability as a result of ongoing global support for renewable energy sources. Indeed, dynamic simulation represents one useful and cost-effective choice for optimizing the flexibility of parabolic trough power plants (PTPP) in a range of transient operating conditions, such as weather changes, resulting again in variations of the output load as well as varying start-up times. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of steady-state and dynamic modelling for PTPP design, development, and optimization. This gives us a greater opportunity for a broad understanding of the PTPPs subjected to a variety of irradiance solar constraints. The most important features of the steady-state and their uses are reviewed, and the most important programs used in steady-state modelling are also highlighted. In addition, the start-up process of the plant, thermal storage system capacities and response dynamics (charging and discharging modes), and yearly electricity yield can be analyzed using dynamic modelling. Depending on the dynamic simulation, specific uses can be realized, including control loop optimization, load estimation for critical in-service equipment, and emergency safety assessment of power plants in the event of an outage. Based on this review, a detailed overview of the dynamic simulation of PTPP, and its development and application in various simulation programs, is presented. Here, a survey of computational dynamic modelling software commonly applied for commercial and academic applications is performed, accompanied by various sample models of simulation programs such as APROS, DYNAMICS, DYMOLA, and ASPEN PLUS. The simulation programs generally depend on the conservation equations of mass, momentum, species, and energy. However, for the equation of equilibrium, specific mathematical expressions rely on the basic flow model. The essential flow models involved, together with the basic assumptions, are presented, and are supplemented through a general survey covering popular simulation programs. Various previous research on the dynamic simulation of the PTPP are reviewed and analyzed in this paper. Here, several studies in the literature regarding the dynamic simulation of the PTPP are addressed and analyzed. Specific consideration is given to the studies including model verification, in order to explore the effect of modelling assumptions regarding the simulation outputs.