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CA's First Molten Salt Energy Plant Approved
An anonymous reader writes "This year we've seen molten salt power plants start to pick up steam around the world, and now the technology is heating up stateside — California just approved its first molten salt energy plant. Designed by SolarReserve, the plant uses heliostats to focus thermal energy on a power tower filled with salt, which is able to reach very high temperatures (over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit) and can hold heat for an extraordinary length of time. Heat from this reserve of molten salt can then be pumped through a steam generator to provide on-demand energy long after the sun has set."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_plants_in_the_Mojave_Desert
Only if you ignore Solar II that ran from 1996 to 1999....
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
It took me 4 reads just to find the two puns that you appear to be so steamed over.
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
Nothing from or controlled by Computer Associates should be trusted with warm water, much less molten salt.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Does anyone know exactly how long the reservoir tanks will keep the molten salt at a high enough temp to be useful? It says it can run for 24 hours but should an abnormally long string of cloudy days occur would this inhibit its usefulness? I realize it's California so it should be fairly sunny year round but I'm not familiar with the area it's being built at. Looked up the salt as well. (Had a hard time thinking it would be sodium chloride...) It's a mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate. I was a bit worried as nitrates tend to be violently reactive/explosive but this would only be with reducing agents. (so it should be relatively fairly safe if there was a leak.) However when potassium nitrate is heated above 560C (as it would in this plant) it turns to potassium nitrite and gives off oxygen. I'm curious if this would be an issue or if the sodium nitrate or something else in the mixture inhibits this. I imagine the oxygen would either stick in the solar collector part as a gas bubble or just be dissolved in the molten salt mixture. Anyone know? (My expertise is more in biochemistry than inorganic/industrial chemistry)
Besides that it is also a "trivial geometry" case. If you assume the collector constant the more obtuse the angle of reflection requires a bigger mirror. If the receiver is low, you end up with an obtuse angle out of necessity. The higher it is, the easier to obtain that magic 90 degrees that minimises the mirror size and from there cost and everything else.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Yes, lord knows the solar energy people don't want to literally make a pillar of salt.
It would drive the Fundies nuts, that they could then equate solar energy with Sodom and Gomorrah.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
What happens when a bird flies too near to the tower?
A republican will pretend to care about the environment long enough to sound like a complete asshole.
I tell ya, if I had a NaCl for every pun on here...
It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork.
I didn't see anywhere in the article where they say that Sodium Chloride (i.e. table salt) was going to be used. I thought power plants typically used a different kind of salt (Sodium Nitrate?) to store thermal energy?
Since the diagram in the article shows the "cold" tank being at 550 degF, then they must not be using sodium chloride or it would be a solid in that tank.