EU-Project HITECO – Solar Receiver for Parabolic Trough Technology

Project website: external page www.hitecoproject.com
Funding source: external page European Union
Partners: external page ARIES Ingeniería y Sistemas S.A. (Spain), external page Asociación de la Industria Navarra (Spain), external page Witzenmann GmbH (Germany),external page Fundación Cidaut (Spain), external page Kavalierglass A.S. (Czech Republic), external page Fundación Tekniker (Spain), external page Pfeiffer Vacuum Technology AG (Germany), external page Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (Spain), external page Trelleborg, AB (Germany)

Background – Increasing use of concentrating solar power (CSP) is crucial to meeting the world’s energy needs while reducing CO₂ emissions. The most mature and promising CSP technology is currently the parabolic-trough solar collector, with more than 1.000 MW operating world-wide and more than 3.000 MW under construction or planned in the next 5 years. However, in order to accelerate the implementation of this technology, the produced electricity cost must be reduced by increasing the CSP plants’ efficiency and improving manufacturability.

The goal of the HITECO Project is to increase the operating temperature of the heat transfer fluid while minimizing thermal losses in the collector. Current state-of-the-art collectors are limited to 400 °C and experience a dramatic efficiency drop at higher temperature. Higher operating temperature will increase the thermal efficiency of the power cycle and improve the effectiveness of thermal storage. Achieving these goals will require new selective coatings for the receiver components, a new heat transfer fluid, and new mechanical design of the receiver and related components.

All these new concepts and designs will be validated through advanced optical, thermal, and structural modeling as well as off-sun and field tests. The manufacturability of the new design will be assessed, to achieve a CSP plant that is easier and cheaper to fabricate, assemble, and commission.

Fig. 1. State-of-the-art parabolic trough collector and receiver

ETH Zurich’s role within the HITECO project is to:

Model thermal performance of the receiver tubes and collector system.
Evaluate sensitivity of the system to key design parameters, including optical properties of the selective coating.
Perform lab-scale off-sun tests of receiver components and participate in field tests of the collector system.
Validate models to help determine optimal design.

Project-related Publications