A serious concentrated solar energy (CSP) mission in China chosen Sulzer, a worldwide fluid engineering firm, to provide each the new and the chilly molten salts pumps for the set up.
The deliberate 100-MW photo voltaic mission will function know-how designed to ship electrical energy from photo voltaic power 24 hours a day.
Molten salts have been used within the nuclear trade for nearly 70 years, and Sulzer has been concerned within the design and manufacture of the pumps that switch the high-temperature fluids across the cooling circuits. The corporate was concerned in pioneering the know-how to be used within the photo voltaic trade greater than 15 years in the past, enabling warmth power to be saved in a single day.
Molten salt is pumped to photo voltaic collectors (tower or parabolic mirror fields) the place its temperature will increase from round 300C to as much as 600C. The high-temperature salt is then saved in a tank and transferred to a warmth exchanger, the place the thermal power is used to create steam that can generate energy utilizing a turbine/generator. This circuit acts as a thermal battery, which allows photo voltaic vegetation to ship energy round the clock in good photo voltaic circumstances.
Sulzer has a monitor file of delivering cold and hot molten salt pumps to photo voltaic installations world wide, together with current tasks in China. The 100-MW CSP Tower mission is the primary of its kind to make use of Sulzer pumps for each the new and the chilly circuits. The three chilly molten salt pumps can be fitted with 2.6-MW motors, and can prolong 18 meters under the bottom plate into the chilly molten salt tank. These can be matched with two sizzling pumps, with all of the pumps being manufactured in Sulzer’s Suzhou, China, plant, situated in Jiangsu Province.
Essentially the most vital problem on this mission was the elevated working stress required within the molten salt circuits. Websites with smaller outputs usually function at round 50 bar, however this mission wanted a 100-bar provide stress from the pumps.
Every pump is constructed to order and this mission needed to be engineered to account for the elevated stress and the marginally bigger energy requirement. In comparison with the extra frequent, decrease stress pumps, there are a number of essential factors, such because the throttle bushing and bush bearing design, that must be fastidiously assessed, correctly engineered and examined earlier than the manufacturing course of can start.
On this case, the end-user needed to attain sure targets within the supply of this mission. They needed worldwide manufacturers to provide the important thing tools, which ideally could be manufactured in China and cost-effective in comparison with the competitors.
Sulzer mentioned engineering of the bare-shaft pump can be accomplished in Europe and the manufacturing can be a detailed collaboration between amenities in Belgium and China. As well as, the corporate will provide a complete help package deal for the merchandise that can be delivered through its native service middle. By deciding on Sulzer for each the cold and warm pumps, the top person can even streamline its spare elements stock.
As a part of the contract Sulzer’s native engineers can be readily available to help the set up and commissioning of the tools. Attributable to their size, the pumps can be assembled on web site earlier than set up within the storage tanks.
This set up follows a number of different profitable tasks in China for Sulzer, together with three sizzling pumps for an additional 100-MW CSP, in addition to six sizzling, and 5 chilly, pumps for a 42-MW parabolic trough set up.
—POWER edited this content material, which was contributed by Sulzer and DMA Europa, the corporate’s advertising and marketing company.
