Benchmarking of six standard CST technologies available in India with technologies abroad
Student name: Mr Tauseef Ahmad
Guide: Mr N S Prasad
Year of completion: 2015
Host Organisation: IT Power Consulting Pvt. Ltd.
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Ms Akanksha Chaurey
Abstract: The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is executing a National Programme on Solar Thermal aimed at conservation of electricity and fossil fuels and providing a clean solution to meet the process heat requirement in industrial sectors. Apart from power generation, the application of the concentrating solar thermal collectors in industrial process heating and institutional cooking has been gaining impetus recently.
This project is carried out to support an ongoing assignment at IT Power awarded by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. The report will help the manufacturers and users of the technology understand the market and technology gap in a more detailed form. In the present work, six concentrated solar thermal technologies available in India have been studied and analysed. The overall objective of this project is to survey through literatures & websites and benchmark existing-commercial or near-commercial concentrated solar thermal technologies for process heat applications available in India with technologies abroad. The data compiled here can be used to answer the questions: “Where are we today?†“Where do we go now?†and “How do we get there from here?â€
The project created a database of manufacturers, with their technology specifications, of all six CST technologies available in India and abroad. A benchmark report based on the material properties, thermal performance and number of installed projects of all six CST technologies was the main outcome of the project. An Excel based model to estimate the hourly & annual thermal output and outlet temperature of heat transfer fluid based on some set conditions for a parabolic trough system was developed. Using the specifications of one International and one Indian parabolic trough system, the annual thermal output per square meter and maximum change in temperature of heat transfer fluid per square meter was estimated and a comparison between the two has been constructed.
Keywords: Concentrated solar thermal, benchmarking, model, thermal output, parabolic trough
