How the greenhouse effect works in Synhelion’s gas-based solar receiver
Last year, Synhelion’s gas-based solar receiver supplied this high-temperature heat to a world leader in traditional reactor technology;Wood.Synhelion and Wood sited their receiver and reactor together on the tower at the Jülich testing site. They successfully produced the world’s first syngas using sunlight to create heat directly. (Synhelion produces first solar syngas in Wood’s industrial-scale reforming reactor)
Solar receiver future: Gas, Liquid, or Solid?
This kind of gas-based solar receiver design comprised one route to higher temperature Gen-3 CSP competing for funding by the US DOE. Each needed to use materials that won’t degrade at a higher temperature than the 565°C of today’s commercial molten salts, as DOE Industrial Decarbonization Director Avi Shultz explained in 2018. The contenders weregases like air, liquids like sodium, and solids like sand.
Sandia won that award with their bauxite-sand-based falling particle receiver and is now constructing the pilot plant at their solar research test site. Synhelion continuesits work with clinker production for CEMEXat Sandia andproduced the world’s first solar synfuel in the Wood’s reactor on the Jülich tower. However, it is not using either particle receiver at Sandia or Jülich. Their proprietary receiver is sited below DLR’s particle receiver on that tower.
Market focus on solar fuels
Synhelion, which began as a spin-off from theETH Zürich solar research laboratory,does not intend its high-temperature receiver to be used in a typical commercial 100 MW tower CSP project with a full circle solar field. These only need to generate heat at 500-600°C. That’s sufficient for electric power production; even 400°C is enough.
But Synhelion is focused on a higher temperature CST market – solar thermochemistry for producing solar fuel to decarbonize transportation or direct solar heat to decarbonize industries like cement that need very high temperatures for industrial processes.
The DOE has also funded Synhelion to provide their gas-based receiver for a second experiment at the University of Florida, this time on perovskites for solar fuels. The first tested thedoping of ceria with nickelto make solar syngas. Can a version of their receiver work as efficiently at just a 5 kW scale?