NEWS I REVIEW New material converts heat and light to energy
A MULTIDISCIPLINARY engineering team at the University of California has developed a new nanoparticle-based material for CSP plants designed to absorb and convert to heat more than 90 percent of the sunlight it captures.
The new material can withstand temperatures greater than 700 degrees C and survive many years outdoors in spite of exposure to air and humidity. The work, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot program, was published recently in two separate articles in the journal Nano Energy. By contrast, current solar absorber material functions at lower temperatures and needs to be overhauled almost every year for high temperature operations.
“We wanted to create a material that absorbs sunlight that doesn’t let any of it escape. We want the black hole of sunlight,” said Sungho Jin, a professor in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.
Jin, along with professor Zhaowei Liu of the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering professor Renkun Chen, developed the Silicon boride-coated nanoshell material.
The novel material features a “multiscale” surface created by using particles of many sizes ranging from 10 nanometers to 10 micrometers. The multiscale
100,000 reflective mirrors to aim sunlight at a tower that has been spray painted with a light absorbing black paint material. The material is designed to maximize sun light absorption and minimize the loss of light that would naturally emit from the surface in the form of infrared radiation.
Image: Engineers at UC San Diego have developed a nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants that converts 90% of captured sunlight to heat.
structures can trap and absorb light which contributes to the material’s high efficiency when operated at higher temperatures.
Traditional power plants burn coal or fossil fuels to create heat that evaporates water into steam. The steam turns a giant turbine that generates electricity from spinning magnets and conductor wire coils. CSP power plants create the steam needed to turn the turbine by using sunlight to heat molten salt.
The molten salt can also be stored in thermal storage tanks overnight where it can continue to generate steam and electricity, 24 hours a day if desired, a significant advantage over photovoltaic systems that stop producing energy with the sunset. One of the most common types of CSP systems uses more than
SunEdison picks up 15MW in India
SUNEDISON has announced that it has won 5 solar photovoltaic (PV) projects totalling 150 megawatts (MW) from Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Limited (KREDL) as announced by the Government of Karnataka. SunEdison or SunEdison affiliates, including Yieldcos, are envisioned as the ultimate owner(s) of these solar projects, and will sell the electricity generated to various entities via Power Purchase Agreements (PPA’s).
“This is yet another milestone in the
the next two to three months.While 44 developers responded to KREDL’s tender for 500 MW of grid-connected solar power plants, SunEdison’s 150 MW represents the largest share awarded to any single company.
journey of SunEdison in India to build a strong pipeline of projects that will be developed and commissioned in the coming years,” said Pashupathy Gopalan, president Asia Pacific Operations, adding that the PPA’s are likely to be signed in
12
www.solar-international.net I Issue V 2014
Following SunEdison’s recent announcement of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for 5 gigawatts (GW) with the Rajasthan Government, this award solidifies SunEdison’s position as the clear leader in India’s rapidly growing solar market.
The UC San Diego team’s combined expertise was used to develop, optimize and characterize a new material for this type of system over the past three years. Researchers included a group of UC San Diego graduate students in materials science and engineering who recently joined the faculty of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The synthesized nanoshell material is spray-painted in Chen’s lab onto a metal substrate for thermal and mechanical testing. The material’s ability to absorb sunlight is measured in Liu’s optics laboratory using a unique set of instruments that takes spectral measurements from visible light to infrared.
Current CSP plants are shut down about once a year to chip off the degraded sunlight absorbing material and reapply a new coating, which means no power generation while a replacement coating is applied and cured. That is why DOE’s SunShot program challenged and supported UC San Diego research teams to come up with a material with a substantially longer life cycle, in addition to the higher operating temperature for enhanced energy conversion efficiency.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80