Energy and exergy analysis of the solar tower to be built in the Mediterranean region

In line with increasing industrialization and population growth in the world, countries need more energy every passing day. Country policies that want to meet rising energy demand quickly and cheaply cause the majority of energy production to be met from fossil fuels. Due to these policies, there are many factors that will have a negative impact on the environment and human health. The most important of these is environmental pollution and global warming. Environmental pollution poses a great risk to the health of all living beings in the world. In particular, fossil fuels are burned for power generation purposes and the resulting gases are the most important factor for these risks. As other greenhouse gases, especially CO2, start to accumulate in the atmosphere, greenhouse effect, which is the biggest cause of global warming, occurs and causes climate change. Along with the climate change, water resources which are indispensable for human life are decreasing, forests which are the lungs of the world are rapidly decreasing due to fire and drought is occurring. In addition, fossil fuels face the danger of future depletion and are not reliable sources of energy. The use of fossil fuels due to the above-mentioned reasons needs to be reduced. In this study, energy and exergy analysis of a solar tower power plant using solar energy from renewable energy sources was done. For the installation site of the facility, Iskenderun region, which has an iron steel industry developed and at the same time very suitable solar source for sun and renewable energy sources, has been chosen. The maximum and minimum efficiencies of the system were calculated as the result of the simulations and analyzes, and the maximal Carnot, thermal and exergetic yields were calculated as 74,664%, 45,814% and 47,27% respectively while the minimum values were found as 58,278%, 38,106% and 39,04% respectively. The minimum net power output from the system is calculated as 989 MW-hour / month while the tower output temperature at December is 500 oC, while the maximum power obtained from the system is calculated as 17172 MW-hour / month when the tower output temperature at July is 1000 oC. Finally, the net power that can be obtained from the system in one year was calculated as 89253 MW-hour / year.