Energy 29 (2004) 883893

www.elsevier.com/locate/energy
Two-tank molten salt storage for parabolic trough solar
power plants
Ulf Herrmann
a,
, Bruce Kelly
b
, Henry Price
c
a
FLABEG Solar International GmbH, Mu hlengasse 7, D-50667 Ko ln, Germany
b
Nexant, Inc., 45 Fremont Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-2210, USA
c
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Boulevard, Golden, CO, USA
Abstract
The most advanced thermal energy storage for solar thermal power plants is a two-tank storage system
where the heat transfer uid (HTF) also serves as storage medium. This concept was successfully demon-
strated in a commercial trough plant (13.8 MW
e
SEGS I plant; 120 MWh
t
storage capacity) and a dem-
onstration tower plant (10 MW
e
Solar Two; 105 MWh
t
storage capacity). However, the HTF used in
state-of-the-art parabolic trough power plants (3080 MW
e
) is expensive, dramatically increasing the cost
of larger HTF storage systems. An engineering study was carried out to evaluate a concept, where
another (less expensive) liquid medium such as molten salt is utilized as storage medium rather than the
HTF itself. Detailed performance and cost analyses were conducted to evaluate the economic value of
this concept. The analyses are mainly based on the operation experience from the SEGS plants and the
Solar Two project. The study concluded that the specic cost for a two-tank molten salt storage is in the
range of US$ 3040/kWh
th
depending on storage size. Since the salt storage was operated successfully in
the Solar Two project, no major barriers were identied to realize this concept in the rst commercial
parabolic trough power plant.
# 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Parabolic trough solar technology is the most proven and lowest cost large-scale solar power
technology available today, primarily because of the nine large commercial-scale solar power
plants that are operating in the California Mojave desert. These plants, developed by Luz
International Limited and referred to as solar electric generating systems (SEGS), range in size

Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-221-925970-51; fax: +49-221-2581117.

E-mail address: ulf.herrmann@agsol.de (U. Herrmann).
0360-5442/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0360-5442(03)00193-2
from 14 to 80 MW and represent 354 MW of installed electric generating capacity. These plants
have been operating daily for up to 18 years, and as the year 2001 ended, these plants had accu-
mulated 127 years of operational experience. These plants sell power to Southern California
Edison, the local power utility, through standard oer power purchase contracts. One of the key
features of these contracts is the ability of these plants to produce energy during the period
when the utility has the highest demand for power. Thus, a key feature of the SEGS plants is
the ability of the plants to dispatch power to help meet the utilitys peak electricity demand. In
southern California, the peak energy demand is during the summer afternoon and early evening,
corresponding to the air conditioning load. The winter peak load is lower but more pronounced
and occurs in the early evening and corresponds to an evening lighting load.
The rst SEGS plant (SEGS I), built in 1984, included 3 h of thermal storage that allowed
the plant to shift electric generation from periods when solar energy is available to the peri-
ods when the utilitys peak electric demand occurs. The plant used a mineral oil HTF and a
two-tank thermal storage system: one tank held the cold oil and a separate tank held the hot
oil once it had been heated to about 300
v
C. This system successfully helped the plant dis-
patch its electric generation to meet the utility peak loads during the summer afternoons and
winter evenings. The mineral oil HTF is very ammable and could not be used at the later,
more ecient SEGS plants that operate at higher solar eld temperatures (approximately 400
v
C). For these plants, the two-tank storage system used at SEGS I is not feasible because
cost of the synthetic HTF is higher, and the high vapour pressure of biphenyl-diphenyl-oxide
would require pressurized storage vessels. As a result, the later SEGS plants used fossil fuel-
red backup to allow the plants to dispatch power to peak electric demand periods when
solar energy is not available. Although no new SEGS plants have been built in the last 10
years, there is growing interest in the development of new trough power plants. The avail-
ability of a thermal energy storage system that would allow these plants to dispatch power
and increase the plant annual capacity factor is a potential economic plus for the technology
over other renewable options.
This paper reviews an engineering study that was carried out to evaluate the feasibility of
using molten salt storage in parabolic trough power plants [1]. This storage concept was suc-
cessfully tested in the Solar Two project, a solar tower plant that uses molten salt as the HTF
[2]. No major technical barriers were identied in this study, and thus the concept appears to
have low technical risk and could easily be used in near-term trough projects. The paper
describes the proposed storage concept and the results of an economic evaluation. The calcu-
lations were done for a 50 MW Rankine cycle and for dierent storage sizes ranging from 0 to
15 h of equivalent full capacity operation.
2. Description of plant concept
Parabolic trough power plants consist of large elds of parabolic trough collectors, a heat
transfer uid/steam generation system, a Rankine steam turbine/generator cycle, and optional
thermal storage and/or fossil-red backup systems. The collector eld is made up of a large
eld of single-axis-tracking parabolic trough solar collectors. A heat transfer uid (HTF) is
U. Herrmann et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 883893 884
heated up as high as 393
v
C as it circulates through the collectors and returns to a series of heat
exchangers (HX) in the power block, where the uid is used to generate high-pressure super-
heated steam (100 bar, 371
v
C). The superheated steam is then fed to a conventional reheat
steam turbine/generator to produce electricity. The existing parabolic trough plants have been
designed to use solar energy as the primary energy source to produce electricity. Given sucient
solar input, the plants can operate at full-rated power using solar energy alone. During summer
months, the plants typically operate for 1012 h a day on solar energy at full-rated electric out-
put. To enable these plants to achieve rated electric output during overcast or nighttime periods,
the plants have been designed as hybrid solar/fossil plants; that is, a backup fossil-red capa-
bility can be used to supplement the solar output during periods of low solar radiation. Alter-
natively, thermal storage can be integrated into the plant design to allow solar energy to be
stored and dispatched when power is required.
Fig. 1 shows a process ow schematic for a typical large-scale parabolic trough solar power
plant with a two-tank molten salt storage. In this conguration, HTF from the solar eld is
diverted through a heat exchanger that is used to charge the thermal storage system, heating
salt from the cold storage up to 385
v
C and storing it in the hot salt storage tank. When the
storage system is discharged, salt from the hot storage tank is sent back to the HTF to salt heat
exchanger and is used to heat cold HTF. The heated HTF is then sent to the power plant.
The cooled salt is returned to the cold storage tank. The temperature of the cold salt is about
300
v
C.
Fig. 1. Schematic ow diagram of a parabolic trough power plant with two-tank molten salt storage.
885 U. Herrmann et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 883893
3. Storage system
The thermal storage system consists of the following principal elements: the nitrate salt inven-
tory, the nitrate salt storage tanks, the oil-to-salt heat exchangers, and the nitrate salt circu-
lation pumps. All main components, except the heat exchanger, were tested in large scale in the
Solar Two project. Beyond it, new pumps for large salt storage tanks were developed and tested
by the US company, Nagle Pumps [3].
3.1. Description of components
3.1.1. Nitrate salt inventory
Inorganic nitrate salt mixtures are the preferred storage media because the salts oer a very
favourable combination of density (1880 kg/m
3
), specic heat (1500 J/kg-K), chemical reac-
tivity (very low), vapour pressure (<0.01 Pa), and cost ($ 0.40$ 0.90/kg). The three principal
candidate salts include the following: Hitec, a ternary mixture of NaNO
2
, NaNO
3
and KNO
3
with a freezing point of 120
v
C; Hitec XL
1
, a ternary mixture of Ca(NO
3
)
2
, NaNO
3
, and
KNO
3
, with a freezing point of 130
v
C; and a binary salt mixture of NaNO
3
and KNO
3
, with a
freezing point of 220
v
C. The latter salt was selected because its cost is the lowest of the three,
and the minimum inventory temperature is at least 80
v
C above the freezing point.
3.1.2. Nitrate salt storage tanks
The low vapour pressure of the nitrate salts allows vertical, eld-erected tanks to be used. The
large tanks, which operate at atmospheric pressure, are similar to commercial oil storage tanks.
The tanks are fabricated from carbon steel, and use self-supporting roofs.
The walls and roof of the tanks are insulated with mineral wool batts and calcium silicate
block insulation, respectively. The insulated foundation consists of the following layers (moving
up from the soil): (1) concrete slab, (2) thermal foundation, (3) foamglass insulation, (4) insulat-
ing re bricks, (5) thin steel plate liner, and (6) sand. A perimeter ringwall of insulating re-
bricks supports the weight of the tank walls and roof.
3.1.3. Oil-to-salt heat exchangers
The oil-to-salt heat exchangers must be designed with very small approach temperatures, in
the range of 310
v
C, to minimize the performance penalty of the Rankine cycle during thermal
storage discharging, and to maintain reasonable heat transport uid supply temperatures to the
collector eld during thermal storage charging. In addition, the vapour pressure of the heat
transport uid is approximately 10 bar at the normal collector eld outlet temperature of 390
v
C. Adding the pressure loss in the heat exchangers and the piping system, the pressure at the
inlet of the heat exchanger is maintained at a nominal value of 20 bar. In contrast, the vapour
pressure of the nitrate salt is very low (<1 Pa), and the pressure of the salt in the heat exchanger
is only that necessary to circulate the salt, or perhaps 5 bar. Thus, the heat exchanger must
accommodate a dierential pressure of about 15 bar between the HTF and the storage uid.
The most economical heat exchanger which provides these features is a conventional shell and
tube design. The high-pressure heat transport uid is placed on the tube side, and the nitrate
salt is placed on the shell side. The tubes are rolled and seal welded to the tubesheet to improve
the reliability of the exchanger.
U. Herrmann et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 883893 886
3.1.4. Nitrate salt circulation pumps
Mechanical pump seals, suitable for the oxidizing characteristics of the nitrate salts, have not
been identied. Thus, nitrate salt pumps are vertical turbine designs. The pump seal is provided
by the combination of (1) a throttle bushing downstream of the last stage, and (2) gravity,
which returns bushing leakage to the pump reservoir. The pumps draw suction from the bottom
of the thermal storage tanks, and use an extended shaft which allows the pumps to be sup-
ported by, and the motors to be located on, a support structure above the tanks.
The principal characteristics of the thermal storage equipment are shown in Table 1 for the
range of investigated storage capacities.
3.2. Safety aspects
The thermal storage uid is a mixture of sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate, both of which
are oxidizing agents. When the nitrates are in contact with organic materials at temperatures
above the ignition temperature, reactions may proceed quickly enough to cause ignition, com-
bustion, or explosion.
The heat transport uid is a synthetic organic oil, with a nominal composition of 75% by
weight diphenyl oxide/ether and 25% biphenyl. Thus, a leak in the oil-to-salt heat exchanger
allows oxidizing materials to mix with a hydrocarbon oil, and the potential exists for a chemical
reaction or combustion.
The most relevant reaction data between nitrate salts and hydrocarbons are probably from a
molten salt safety study conducted by Sandia National Laboratories in 1980 [4]. Liquid gasoline
was introduced into an inventory of nitrate salt at a temperature of 600
v
C. The hydrocarbons
Table 1
Thermal storage equipment characteristics
Item Storage capacity (h)
1 3 6 9 12 15
Active salt inventory (tons) 4778 14,096 28,192 42,288 56,384 70,480
Thermal storage tanks dimensions, height diameter (m m)
Cold tank 12 16:6 14 26:3 14 37:2 14 45:5 14 37:2
a
14 41:6
a
Hot tank 12 16:8 14 26:7 14 37:7 14 46:2 14 37:7
a
14 42:2
a
Oil-to-salt heat exchangers
Number of HX 3 3 3 4 5 6
Exchanger area (m
2
) 8635
b
8635
b
8635
b
8419
c
9067
c
9499
c
Nitrate salt pumps
Flow rate (kg/s) 1189
d
1189
d
1189
d
1546
e
2.081
e
2616
e
Head (m) 19.2
d
19.2
d
19.2
d
25.6
e
32.0
e
38.4
e
Power (kW
e
) 316
d
316
d
316
d
547
e
921
e
1389
e
a
Two cold tanks and two hot tanks required.
b
Oil-to-salt heat exchanger duty sized for discharging of storage.
c
Oil-to-salt heat exchanger duty sized for charging of storage (charging capacity is higher than discharging
capacity).
d
Hot salt pump power rating.
e
Cold salt pump power rating.
887 U. Herrmann et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 883893
vapourized when exposed to the nitrate salt, and burned at the surface of the inventory when
exposed to ambient air. However, the hydrocarbons did not react with the nitrate salt below the
surface of the salt inventory. In other words, a temperature of 600
v
C was not high enough to
initiate a theoretical reduction reaction in which an oxygen atom was removed from a nitrate
molecule.
In the event of a tube or weld rupture in the oil-to-salt heat exchanger, a combustion reaction
is believed to be very unlikely, for the following reasons:
. The heat transport uid has ammability ratings of 1 from the National Fire Protection
Agency, while gasoline has a rating of 3. As a result, it is highly unlikely that the heat
transport uid will have a more energetic reaction with nitrate salt than gasoline.
. The highest temperature in the oil-to-heat exchanger is 390
v
C, which is 201
v
C below the
exposure tests conducted by Sandia, and 220
v
C below the autoignition temperature of the
heat transport uid.
. Oxygen is not present in the heat exchanger.
3.3. Cost estimation
Storage system costs are summarized in Table 2 for each of the cases listed in Table 1. The
system costs include material, installation labour, and overhead costs associated with eld con-
struction, but exclude costs for engineering, procurement, construction management, and inter-
est during construction. The values in the table were developed from the following:
. Nitrate salt inventory and nitrate salt pump costs were derived from supplier information on
the 15 MW
e
Solar Tres central receiver project in southern Spain.
. Storage tank, insulation, and foundation costs were derived from construction cost estimates
on the 10 MW
e
Solar Two central receiver projects in southern California.
. The oil-to-salt heat exchanger unit cost was estimated to be $ 147/m
2
[5].
Table 2
Thermal storage system costs in US$ 1000
Item Storage capacity (h)
1 3 6 9 12 15
Nitrate salt inventory 2208 6512 13,025 19,537 26,049 32,562
Storage tanks 838 2405 4638 6842 9275 11,484
Tank insulation 300 608 974 1300 1947 2280
Tank foundations 518 984 1653 2273 3216 3823
Oil-to-salt heat exchanger 4195 4195 4195 5453 7340 9228
Nitrate salt pumps 692 812 1383 1647 2063 2629
Balance of system 875 1551 2587 3705 4989 6201
Total 9626 17,066 28,453 40,757 54,880 68,206
Unit cost, $/kWh
t
65.63 38.79 32.33 30.88 31.18 31.00
U. Herrmann et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 883893 888
. The balance of system includes piping, valves, instruments, electric heat tracing, thermal insu-
lation, electric power and control wiring, and structural steel. The costs were estimated to be
10% of the identied component costs above.
The unit storage cost for the 1-h case is very high because the high cost of the oil-to-salt heat
exchanger must be borne by a small storage capacity. For the remaining ve cases, the cost of
the oil-to-salt heat exchanger becomes progressively less important.
4. Performance modelling
4.1. PCTrough performance model
To determine the electricity production from solar power plant with and without storage,
annual performance calculations of the considered congurations were done using the program,
PCTrough. PCTrough was developed by Flabeg Solar based on the experience gained from
similar programs such as SOLERGY and the LUZ model for plants of the SEGS type. It has
been signicantly extended to include plant congurations with combustion turbine combined
cycles, thermal energy storage and dry cooling. The computer model output has been validated
with measured data from performance reports of SEGS plants (Price et al. [6]).
From the given meteorological input values of insolation and ambient temperature, the per-
formance model calculates hourly performance values of HTF mass ow and temperatures, col-
lected solar thermal energy, thermal energy fed into the storage, thermal energy taken from the
storage, heat losses of solar eld, piping and storage, dumped energy, and electric gross and net
power. The model also considers thermal inertia of the solar eld, storage, and the HTF system
under transient insolation conditions.
The energy output of the solar eld is calculated, taking the following into account: radiation,
ambient temperature, condition of solar eld, shadowing caused by other collector rows, cosine
losses, end losses of collectors, shadowing by bellows, reection losses, dirt and alignment
losses, transmissivity of glass tube, absorption of selective layer on absorber tube, incident angle
eects on the above factors and, of course, the thermal losses by radiation, convection and con-
duction. For this study, the performance model was extended to account for the specic charac-
teristics of a molten salt two-tank storage.
4.2. Performance modelling of SEGS plants with thermal storage
In plant congurations with integrated thermal storage, the solar eld will be oversized com-
pared to congurations without storage. The solar multiple of the solar eld depends on the
storage capacity and also on the local weather conditions. The operation strategy of the storage
and the whole plant can vary with the local weather conditions and the local electricity demand
and tari structure. For the analyses presented here, the following operation strategy was
applied: priority in operation always has the steam turbine; turbine operation comes before
storage charging. Only if the thermal energy collected by the solar eld exceeds the design value
of the steam generator of the Rankine cycle, the surplus energy is fed into the thermal storage.
889 U. Herrmann et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 883893
If, on the other hand, the thermal energy collected by the solar eld is lower than the design
value, additional energy will be taken from the storage, provided that enough energy was
stored. By this means, the turbine can be operated at full load with high eciency even under
low radiation conditions. Discharging of the storage and operation of the turbine continues
after sunset until the storage is discharged again. No specic operation or discharge prole was
assumed for the storage. The storage is used in a way that the turbine can be operated at full
load as much as possible. However, storage discharging can easily be shifted to periods with
higher revenues, if there are any.
The storage model also considers heat losses of the cold and hot storage tanks. Heat loss
measurements of the salt storage tanks were done at Solar Two [2]. A regression analysis was
performed to develop an empirical heat loss equation from the measured values:
q
loss
0:00017 T
salt
0:012 kW=m
2
(1)
where T
salt
is the temperature (in
v
C) of the salt in the hot and in the cold tank, respectively.
The heat loss calculation is not only necessary to determine the eciency of the storage, but
also to determine if and when freeze protection operation is required. The freezing point of the
salt is about 220
v
C, and it has to be guaranteed that during bad weather periods or plant out-
ages, the salt temperature stays always well above this point. Fig. 2 shows the result of a calcu-
lation for the cooling of the cold storage tank of 6 h storage, if it is out of operation for several
weeks in winter. The calculation was done with meteorological data from Barstow, CA, using
the rst 6 weeks of the year. The gure shows that after 6 weeks without charging and discharg-
ing the storage, the storage temperature will still be over 250
v
C and hence well above the freez-
ing point. Such a long standstill period of the system is not expected during normal operation.
Consequently, no risk of freezing of the salt exists during normal operation of the storage.
This was also demonstrated in the operation of the storage tanks of the Solar Two project [2].
No danger of freezing of the tank inventory occurred in the 1
1
/
2
year of system testing. The
Solar Two tanks were considerably smaller than the tanks considered here, which leads to
higher specic heat losses. The operation temperature of the cold tank of Solar Two was
290
v
C, which is similar to the temperature used here.
Fig. 2. Cooling curve of cold storage tank during standby over a period of 6 weeks.
U. Herrmann et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 883893 890
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891 U. Herrmann et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 883893
Nevertheless, freezing of salt has to be avoided under all circumstances when unexpected
operation conditions or plant outages will occur. Therefore, heat trace cable will be installed at
the salt pipes and the salt-to-oil heat exchanger, and immersion heaters will be installed in the
tanks, to prevent the salt from freezing in emergency situations. Electrical heating in normal
operation is not expected to be used. Thus, no auxiliary electricity consumption of the heating is
considered in the performance analyses. But the investment cost for the electrical heating system
is taken into account in the cost estimation.
The performance calculation also takes into account that the live steam temperature is lower
during storage operation than during daytime, when steam is generated directly by the solar
eld. This leads to a slight decrease of power block eciency.
The results of the annual performance calculation are presented below in Table 3.
5. Economy of concept
The economic value of the molten salt storage concept was assessed by a levelized electricity
cost (LEC) calculation. The LEC was developed using the following equation:
LEC $=MWh
e

Investment cost Fixed charge rate Fuel cost O&M cost
Net electric output
(2)
The xed charge rate is an economic factor, which converts the capital cost to an equivalent
annual expense. A representative value of 0.104 is used for this study. The input data and the
results of the performance and LEC calculation are presented in Table 3. The main result of the
analysis is depicted in Fig. 3. The plot shows the LEC and the number of full load hours for
dierent storage capacities and for a reference conguration without storage.
According to Fig. 3, two-tank molten salt storage systems are economically attractive, if the
storage system has a minimum size. Already, the cost estimation of the storage system itself
(Section 3.3) showed that the specic cost for a small storage system is relatively high because of
the high cost of the heat exchanger. Only storage system with a capacity bigger than 3 h can
achieve LECs, which are lower than those for a trough plant without storage. The lowest LEC
Fig. 3. Levelized electricity cost for trough plants with molten salt storage.
U. Herrmann et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 883893 892
was calculated for a plant with a storage capacity of 12 h. The reduction in LEC is about 10%
compared to the reference system.
Larger storage systems again lead to higher LECs. The reason for that is not just the rising
specic cost (see Table 2). The main reason is the lower utilization period of such big storages.
On good days in summer, the turbine can be operated about 12 h directly from the solar eld.
Hence, the storage can only be used in the remaining 12 h and the hot tank cannot be dis-
charged completely. A portion of about 20% of the storage capacity cannot be used, which
makes the system less economic.
In addition to the economic improvement, the capacity factor of the plant also increases con-
siderably. For a 9 h storage, the full-load hours are already doubled compared to a plant with-
out storage, and for a 15 h storage, the plant can operate at full load for almost 5000 h.
6. Conclusion
Thermal storage can considerably improve the attractiveness of solar thermal power plants. It
allows to extend or to shift the operation of the plant from sunny periods with a high peak
demand. Thus, the plant can operate much more exibly and times of mismatch between energy
supply by the sun and energy demand can be reduced. In the present study, the technical and
economical feasibility of a two-tank molten salt storage was assessed. No major technical bar-
riers were found to realize this concept. The LEC calculation has shown that this concept can
improve the economy of parabolic trough plants, provided that the storage is big enough. A
storage of 12 h full load capacity reduces the LEC about 10%. Hence, storage systems not only
improve the exibility of solar power plants but also help to reduce the specic electricity cost
and thus can support market introduction of the parabolic trough technology.
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893 U. Herrmann et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 883893