Best Industrial Process for Solar Power Introduction

<...Is anyone aware of such a process?...>

Many things that take place do so according to a diurnal cycle. The human body is matched to it.

So most if not all of the planet's human population would be <...aware of such a process...>.

Solar pv is expensive and unreliable...trying to make it work in place of grid supplied power just makes it even more expensive...spend your money on improving the efficiency of your manufacturing process instead....

One “in development” approach is that of Brilliant Light Power. Continuous Visible light (with heat as a by-product) is generated as Hydrogen gas is catalytically converted to * below conventional “ground state” to form hydrinos*

Their website, brilliantlightpower.com, contains links to numerous lab experiments in the KW to MW range. Their biggest challenge seems to be keeping these devices from thermal self-destruction!

"Wouldn't be great if we could find an industrial process that could relay completely on solar PV (or solar thermal for that matter) on a commercial scale?"

Any process that can start and stop at will, or ideally uses any amount of power until it does would be an ideal process.

Producing drink water out of seawater might be a valid application.

The problem with solar is not what can be done with it, the problem is what cannot be done with it.

Aluminium smelter would be a fine example that requires power all day long and not intermittently.

Funny enough, EV's are on the list, that will most likely not be benefit from solar power generation.

There is no alternative but to use storage devices like batteries that convert solar radiation to direct current through chemical energy route. The recycling capability of batteries is being progressively increased by new types of batteries . However, storage presently is three times costlier than production .

Hydel storage by using solar electricity to pump water to a static head by pumps is a better option for industrial level storage but there is a need for water, turbines, and generators. Industries could collaborate with existing hydel units by setting up solar PV and pumps and use electricity as generated by existing turbines and generator. This would definitely a viable option .

I doubt that solar PV will ever be viable except in an area where clouds are non existant. For instance Where I worked we used mobile radio repeaters with 1000w of solar and 1000AH battery on a mobile trailer. The radios consumed around 100W at full use so the excess of 900W went to the batteries for the charging to make up for the 16 or so hours a day of no solar charging.

These units had to run 24/7/365 and if we had more than three cloudy days then the system started to fail and a generator and battery charger for each mobile were needed to bring the system back to full power.

There were thoughts of using a wind generator to supplement but no sun meant no solar driven wind so end of story. Ramp that up to run a small dragline drawing 6MW and the battery argument becomes pointless and go to bigger cyclic demand then, figure it out, solar power is not feasable, 6MW * 24HR, well you do the maths.

Correct Gadepalli,

Water pumping for hydro plants is one of the processes that could use solar power exclusively for "charging" the upper storage. This, however, could be classified as storage techniques rather than industrial process. Effectively, any process that can be stopped and started relatively easy and uses lots of electricity could be used for exclusive solar PV applications. Batch production of endproduct is also very suitable for integration with PV. Example, instead of continuously producing 100 tons of product per hour 24/7/365, the solar-powered project should produce 250 tons of product per hour during the day to achieve the same annual production rate. As long as differences in CAPEX (machinery cost) and not dramatic compering to OPEX (electricity bill) change to solar PV could be beneficial. Not to mentioned workforce that is working day time only vs 24/7 (one shift vs 2 to 3 shifts). Levelised cost of electricity/energy (LCOE) is an interesting metric used to compare the energy production costs including CAPEX and OPEX between different technologies. It hasn't been used in the industrial processes environment although it would be very useful to know the production costs of a particular product including CAPEX and OPEX for different technologies (grid-supplied electricity, Solar PV etc.). Effectively, you could take off the grid baseload user of 100MW (example) operating 24/7/365 and replace it with solar PV user of 250MW operating 8 hours a day and if properly designed, you wouldn't even need storage. Your stock of products in the yard/warehouse could be seen as "storage of energy" although it is actually storage of consumed energy and other material used in the production process. The end result is the same as if you produced the product with grid electricity or battery backed-up solar PV (annual production volumes remain the same). Only the costs of expensive battery storage are not present.

Capital cost of machinery that would be idle during non- sunshine period and the fluctuating sunshine are the two hurdles for using solar energy for direct industrial use . The only alternative is storage either with chemical energy or with static head, be it water or as with lifting a huge concrete block and deriving electrical energy, as it drops due to earth’s gravity.

my suggestion to put up solar PV plants, either floating or in proximity of the reservoir to pump the tail water would only mean CAPEX on PV panels, pumps and of course, the cost of land. Since infrastructure for producing power is already there, any industrial process could work indirectly with solar power .

At this point, except for Nuclear power generation, we are all indebted to sun !

Great suggestion!

In this case, it is not the storage of energy that is being applied here but shifting of demand and consumption of electricity on an industrial scale within the correct time period.

Pumps run on electricity need a steady supply of electricity at specified voltage, especially AC motors . DC motors could however have a larger range of voltage at which they could work .

To overcome initial torque, for any motor to start, we do require a higher quantum of electrical energy. In other words, we cannot start even a BLDC motor of low wattage directly with solar power panels unless they are four times the needed wattage of the motor .
how this problem is going to be faced ?

The water treatment plant is grid connected and so has sufficient starting (inrush) current capability for such times. The grid connection also means that "excess" power can be exported and credited to the supplier.

Many pumps are typically started on "closed head" for exactly the reasons that you indicate, since they need to "start" before they have the inertia of up to 30km of pipeline to the receiving reservoirs also imposed.

The effect can be reduced by having staged start-up of the multiple motors on the site for such things as air compressors, dosing systems, backwash pumps and so on. Such staged start up processes are good practice anyhow, since most sites of that size are charged for peak instantaneous demand as part of their billing calculations, so you make sure that you do not turn everything on simultaneously.

Some facilities even choose to use HV motors for some applications (6.6kV) to reduce voltage drop effects. The river pumps at the WTP I'm thinking of operate around 900 L/sec with a 120m head. We would never dream of starting all three concurrently.

When you say municipal grid is already connected , it all boils down to connecting solar power to grid . What we need is a stand-alone system that could work solely on solar energy .

probably electrolytic cells producing any product would qualify for direct solar energy use . Even then we do require some stored electrical energy for the industry to run smoothly for lights and fans .

solar electricity without at least part storage, would be like living in Stone Age when any productive activity was restricted to day time (except reproduction [of course not acceptable to many])

You ask "What we need is a stand-alone system...". Are you talking from personal need or generally for everyone?

We are very fortunate to live in a country where power supply interruptions due to system failure are rare. For every property to have "stand alone" capability would mean that at society level there would be huge redundancy. That aside, there are now multiple houses that are having power storage systems to operate from their own supply, but with few exceptions remain connected to grid for ability to export/import the difference.

There is some interest here in "microgrids" where multiple houses will interconnect, using a shared storage device rater than having connection to a grid that may be some hundreds of km overland.

There are still large areas in Aus that are already "off-grid" by necessity of distance/economics. Many of these are migrating from diesel generators (with battery storage) to solar systems (with battery storage).

There are many thousands of remote pumps for stock water that have solar service only with no battery. I suppose for these, the storage is the small reservoir they usually fill.

Gentleman,

The wider adoption of solar energy by the industry will be driven by commercial motives, not by ideological views.

Therefore, if grid connection is required for the short periods of time, or if generators have to kick in every now and then, that's fine, as long as the majority of consumed electricity is produced by the cheapest source available (minimal LCOE).

The reason for my search for the appropriate industrial process and not small off-grid solutions for villages is simple, the largest consumers should be targeted first. If these consumers find commercial benefits and adopt solar energy, the impact will be so much more profound than installing small scale off-grid solutions.

Small drops make an ocean . If all small users produce their own power, through solar ( Which is very possible since the area exposed to sun in any house is large enough ) then the industry could look for better and more efficient use of solar, that could be imitated and installed in their homes, if found economical by the small users .

it is thus necessary to reduce the community (Government) responsibility of providing electrical power and the small consumers become their own producers .

that should be the goal .

An obvious application of solar energy which is matched to its availability, is to any cooling requirement where the sun's heat is contributing to the need for cooling. Air conditioning for homes, office buildings, or industrial facilities, which is needed (or increased) because of the solar input at the time of day, could be addressed directly by generating the energy required to cool at the time when solar is incident.

Great idea!

There is a possibility of using solar thermal for such applications, however, because of a need for quite a bit of space for panels it would be difficult to do solar PV and solar thermal at the same time. Possibly for district cooling applications you could use lots of space And pipe the coolant around the district.

I was going to suggest industrial cold storage facilities eg for food, but I don't know how well matched the lower temperature requirements would be to a solar array with the necessary output, and a footprint that is reasonable and well matched to the size of the building. And of course, it wouldn't address the energy need to continue to cool to food storage optimum at night which would require storage capacity or grid backup.

Solar energy is 50% thermal, 40% visible and 10% other radiations . These are approximate figures .

Now, PV panels are available economically with conversion efficiency of around 16%.This means that there is still24% of visible radiation that could’ve been converted into electricity and efforts are on in this direction. We have 50% thermal that is of course very much being used naturally for evaporation of water from sea or any water source.

But using thermal solar energy for industrial purposes has not been very impressive, while solar PV panels for conversion of visible solar radiation has become quite economical and thus popular .

Absorption cooling, using solar heat has been somehow kept on back burner . Using PV electrical power for compression cooling using motors is preferred .

If only a satisfactory economical solar cooling by absorption mechanism is made available by technology, that would be the best invention at least for tropics both for comfort and food preservation applications. Marginal electrical needs could be met by PV and battery storage .

if such and individual domestic needs are met by individual PV generation , hydel could perhaps meet the industrial needs, augmented by huge solar parks with storage .

This will of course, be a dream scenario .

The solar thermal cooling is really interesting. But as you said, it has been neglected - it hasn't received the investment, subsidies and so on which have driven PV to affordable prices. But hopefully that will change. Best scenarios always begin as a dream...

https://www.nature.com/news/how-heat-from-the-sun-can-keep-us-all-cool-1.21390

Regarding solar thermal, have a look at the 800MW example where costs is similar to gas generated thermal.

https://www.glasspoint.com/technology/lowest-cost/