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SOLAR THERMAL POWER PLANTS OPERATING ON PARABOLIC TROUGHS MIRRORS
Authors: VASIU I.
Number of views: 132
Among the renewable energies, the Sun
represents the most abundant, inexhaustible and
clean primary energy source of our planet, which can
partly solve in the future, the worldwide energy
supply.
Sunlight has, at the terrestrial surface, low and
variable intensity, largely depending on geographical
latitude, seasons, weather and time of day, so that,
with the view of obtaining high parameters of solar
heat, useable in the power plants operation,
concentrating and heat storage equipments are
needed.
Under these circumstances, after reviewing the
solar radiation properties and its availability at the
ground level, the paper put into evidence the current
design of parabolic trough collectors, as the most
proven solar technology used in thermal power
plants, able to achieve temperatures around 400°C,
required for the thermodynamic cycle development.
To date, solar power plants capacities have
recorded at global level low values, placed at almost 5
GWe, especially due to the excessively costs needed by
the solar field technologies, but promising
achievements are expected in the near future, by
increasing investmens in this area.