Solar Dessert Plant Opens

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-us-thermal-plant-opens-industry-grows-192327910.html

Yep. It works. (The method to put a link in a post).

It's impressive, but I heard that it is frying birds.

The economics still do not seem quite there. There are plans out there that also store some of the heat in molten salt tanks during the day, if the 100% output is not required as electricity, and this allows for some hours of operation after dark.

I like these projects, but in the long run, not sure these will be the most economica solar energy.

I've probably posted this link a half dozen times, after it was posted by another member.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/4245896

It sure seems to me that solar, along with underground cooling, could be applied to this concept.

Maybe I'm just missing something, but it seems like one of the most promising ways to generate cheap, clean electricity, that I've seen in years.

Even using natural gas for heat, I think this design would be far cleaner than conventional steam turbines.

Unless everything is well sealed, the losses of refrigerant from a large plant would intolerable to the EPA. Sealless pump (magnetically coupled), sealed turbine, etc.

In a steam plant, there are invariably losses through boiler leaks, leaks in valve stems, losses through pump seals, etc. A bit of water lost as flashed off steam is not as big a deal, but refrigerant losses in the tons would cause a scandal.

Good point, but I'm guessing that they have addressed that at the Chena plant.

I wouldn't think it would be any harder to accomplish than a closed loop AC system.

The central heating and cooling plants at most Universities use very large chillers in parallel (5000-6000 tons per unit, as I recall), and even these have some finite refrigerant loss, obviously not large, or the expense, and the fines would be astronomical.

I am more interested in using waste heat to drive refrigerant cycles, so that a hybrid cooling concept could be applied to medium sized power plants to reduce water consumption (i.e.- get rid of cooling tower and use air cooling/refrigerant cooling hybrid). At present, there are no hybrid cooled plants in Texas, not sure about anywhere else.

There's room for a lot of improvement just about everywhere you look.

We've built up the entire planet without bothering to worry about efficiency, and we're still at it. It took me a while to find an outdated house with 8' ceilings.

I would like to open a thread discussing power generation cooling schemes. Of primary interest is the aforementioned hybrid cooling concepts. Even solar driven LiBr chiller in in the 50,000 to 1,000,000 ton capacity range should be considered, although perhaps ammonia absorption cycle would be less costly in the long run. Yes, I know that is an immense size for a refrigeration cycle. One spin off might be low TDS condensate from such a system ( when operating below the dew point ) - and this water could be cleaned up further to supply HRSG equipment, etc.

Sunny thoughts?

A moon pie could be called a lunar dessert.