Method and apparatus of solar central receiver with boiler and super-heater

Abstract

A solar tower central receiver with separated boiler and Super-Heater allows better control on the output steam's temperature. The boiler takes higher solar flux density and works at lower temperature while the Super-Heater takes lower solar flux and works at high temperature to optimize the cost to performance ratio. The solar fluxes of the boiler and super-heater are adjustable through the pointing of the heliostats. The boiler consists of parallel pipes as solar absorber and the Super-Heater consists of helix parallel pipes as solar absorber. The steam drum chamber interconnects boiler and Super-Heater. The absorb pipes and circulation pipes are connected to water chamber, steam drum chamber, and Super-Heater chambers. The water level sensor and temperature sensors provide information regarding the operating status of the receiver.

1 . A solar tower central receiver is designed to accept high concentrated solar energy to generate high temperature and high-pressure steam for a steam turbine, consists a boiler and a Super-Heater module, that Super-Heater is positioned above the boiler. Three or more water level sensors are installed on the drum chamber to monitoring the water level of the chamber. The temperature sensors and pressure sensors are installed on the receiver for monitoring the temperature and pressure of the receiver.
 (a) The central receiver consists of boiler and super-heater;   (b) The super-heater is made by helix solar radiation absorb pipes;   (c) The size of the receiver and running protocols of the heliostat field is designed to make the solar intensities on boiler and super-heater controllable;   
   
   
       2 . A boiler as set forth in  claim 1  wherein said boiler consists of a water chamber at the bottom of the boiler, a drum at the top of the boiler, and straight parallel solar absorb pipes between bottom chamber and drum, and water circulation pipes that connects between drum and bottom chamber. The sensors installed on the drum and chambers provide information to keep the boiler running under water critical parameters. 
   
   
       3 . A steam super-heater as set forth in  claim 1  wherein said steam Super-Heater consists of a steam chamber at top of the module and a drum at bottom of the device, where the drum is shared with the boiler, and helix parallel solar absorb pipes between drum and top chambers with the connection to the water and steam separation chamber at top of the chamber. The sensors installed on the module provide information to keep the module running within the safe range. Two redundant emergency mechanical steam release valves are installed on the top of the steam chamber to keep system pressure and temperature within safe range. 
   
   
       4 . The size of the modules as set forth in  claim 1  wherein the size is optimized between the sizes of the spots from the longest distant away heliostats from the geo-optic limitations, wind turbulences, the thermal losses and the cost of the manufacturing. The geo-optic limitation is 0.8% of the distance, the wind influences is about 1 sigma of the standard deviations. 
   
   
       5 . The method of the operating the central receiver as set forth in  claim 1  wherein the method consists using the smaller spot from the closer heliostat to adjust energy intensity ratio between two modules.