Hybrid Concentrated Solar-Fossil Fuel Electric Power Generation and its Application in Saudi Arabia (HyCS-NPG)

The tremendous growth of the electric energy consumption represents an economic and environmental pressing problem in Saudi Arabia. Electricity generation currently relies on hydrocarbons, leading to waste of precious national resources and significant carbon emissions. In KSA, the required energy by 2020 would reach about 395 TWh, which would result in more than 240 million ton CO2 emissions per year of. It will also mean the installation of new electric power plants requiring investments of more than US $20 billion. Fortunately, solar energy is an abundant resource in Saudi Arabia, which makes Hybrid Concentrated Solar‐Natural Gas Power (HyCS‐NGP) a promising solution for electricity generation in the country. The same applies to many other countries in the Sunbelt where recent expansion in the utilization of natural gas for electricity generation has created a significant base for introducing concentrated solar power as a supplement. Expanding the rating of the existing natural gas powered fleet by adding a solar field to each plant wherever possible can increase the available base power with a relatively small investment. HyCS‐NGP reduces the need for thermal energy storage in traditional concentrated solar thermal plants, and results in dispatchable power on demand at lower cost than stand-alone concentrated thermal power and much cheaper than photovoltaic plants. This is because gas can be used when solar energy is not available to respond to demand, and extra solar energy can be used to reform natural gas into syngas, which can be compressed and stored on location, to be used later as a supplement to natural gas. Storing energy in the chemical form is likely to be more compact than traditional molten based thermal energy storage, and is much cheaper than storing electricity, which is required if PVs are used. In this project, we propose to work on systems design of hybrid fossil fuel concentrated solar power plants, design of low temperature catalysts that can be used to store solar energy by reforming fuels, and clean flexible combustion as a key of integrating the two sources of energy.

The study addresses three challenges in the design and operation of HyCS-NGP:
(*) The optimal integration of solar heat and the heat generated by burning natural gas or syngas;
(*) The reformer design and integration with the power plant, which is the key technology for chemical storage.
(*) The design of a fuel flexible clean combustion system that will perform reliably over the range of fuel composition and load expected in the system.