CSP plant thermal-hydraulic simulation

In the frame of the development of new solar plants and their innovative components, our research activities focus on theoretical elaborations and simulation to support basic design and assistance to manufacturing. The aim is to describe the use of Relap5 code [1] for analyzing the thermal-hydraulic behavior of a CSP Plant based on parabolic through collectors. Here a fluid dynamic simulation of the Test Plant, situated at Casaccia Research Center, will be evaluated. For the first simulation, the filling and draining phase of the circuit has been considered. It has been simulated a time period corresponding to the plant starting with the switch on of the pump, the filling of the circuit, a steady state condition and the pump switching off until the complete draining of the circuit. This studies have been performed in different collectors configurations and different logics of the operation valves in order to define the better system control and the better operating procedure. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.