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Experimental Investigation of Thermal Energy Storage in a Solar Tower
Student Name CHARALAMBOUS, Petros
Course Title MEng Mechanical Engineering
Project Supervisor Dr James Buick
INTRODUCTION
While passing through the 21st century, everyone witnesses the changes to the environment and identifies the
harmful impact of people actions on it. Therefore, due to the environmental awareness, to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, renewable energy is getting more and more important every passing year, month, day, even
hour.
As a part of the nations strategic plans and commitments to reduce their impact on the environment, comes the
need to implement renewable energy for more eco-friendly energy production as well as due to the rapidly
increasing cost and quick forthcoming shortages in oil supply.
NEED FOR THE PROJECT
A huge drawback of most of the developing renewable energy technologies is that times of peak generation do
not much with times of peak requirement. For example wind turbines will not operate in cases where there is little
wind. Likewise, solar energy systems cannot be used to directly power anything during evenings and nights.
Thus, there is the need to store energy which will allow us to use whenever needed, to satisfy those
requirements. This is currently being achieved on some systems by using batteries to store generated electricity
until it is required. Instead, energy can be stored even before it is converted to electricity, like heating an object
which will release the thermal energy at a later time. This approach is used by a Solar Tower project
(www.enviromission.com.au), where the thermal energy is stored in the ground.
AIM
The aim of this project will involve optimizing a model of the Solar Updraft Tower and investigating the optimum
arrangement of water tanks and other materials and configurations (different scenarios) to provide a steady
supply of electricity.
OBJECTIVES
The objectives that will help towards the successful completion of the project can be identified as follows:
Research, Literature review, Investigation, Feasibility Study
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Design, development and optimization of a model of the Solar Tower, theoretical experimental
computational analysis
Heat storage materials testing (i.e. materials which have a high Specific Heat Capacity taking into account their
weight, such as Water, Salt, Bricks, and Pebbles Shingle etc.)
FEASIBILITY
The project is feasible as it has been proven already by the protoype plant built in Manzanares, Spain by the
German, Schlaich Bergermann and Partner.
University of Portsmouth | Faculty of Technology | School of Engineering
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