Thermal power generation with solar energy

Energy production from fossil resources, which cause global warming and are depleted day by day, is becoming more and more difficult. Studies on renewable energy are increasing to meet the energy needs and to produce energy in cleaner ways. Among the renewable energy sources, solar energy stands out due to its unlimited energy source, absence of harmful emissions, and ease of installation and operation. Turkey has a great solar energy potential as it is in the sun belt in the middle of Europe and Asia. In the existing solar energy systems, the concentrated solar energy systems provide the opportunity to produce electricity by producing steam at high temperatures. In this study, the power generation that can be obtained from the concentrated solar energy systems with the organic Rankine cycle combined with parabolic trough type solar collectors was investigated. Thermal experiments were carried out with parabolic trough type solar collector and as a result of these experiments, optical and thermal efficiency calculations were made. Using glycerin as the heat transfer fluid, the useful energy transferred to the heat transfer fluid was determined. As a result of the calculations, it has been determined that the average thermal efficiency of the system is 90% and the optical efficiency is 20% on average. The heat transfer fluid heated in the parabolic trough solar collector was used as the heat source in the organic Rankine cycle for electricity generation, and the ORC system was theoretically simulated in the Chemcad program to determine how much electricity could be produced. The amount of electricity to be produced according to the working fluids to be used in the cycle has been studied and thermodynamically analyzed. The amount of electricity to be produced by using R134a, butane, isobutane, pentane and isopentane as working fluid was investigated. As a result, the highest electricity production was observed with isopentane.