Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants, such as the
Gemsolar and PS10 plants in Spain, use arrays of mirrors (or heliostats) to
focus a large area of the Sun's rays onto a small area, where the concentrated
light is converted to heat that is used to generate electricity. However, large
areas are required to make CSP plants economically feasible which is not always
a logical solution.
While CSP has gained popularity in recent years with
numerous plants being built around the world, they require a large area to
generate the amounts of electricity needed to make them economically viable.
Taking inspiration from the sunflower, researchers have devised a more
efficient design that would allow such plants to be constructed on a much
smaller area. Researchers at MIT and
RWTH Aachen University in Germany have devised a nature-inspired design that
occupies a much smaller area but at the same time captures more sunlight than
the current CSP plants.
As the designs of heliostat layouts were reworked at
MIT, researchers noted that the layouts functioned efficiently because of the
spiral elements which were similar to the ones found in nature. By modifying
the heliostat layout using numerical optimization to create a narrower layout,
the model calculated that the amount of land required for the mirrors could be
reduced by up to 10 percent without affecting their efficiency in reflecting
light. After noticing that the resulting pattern had some spiral elements
similar to patterns found in nature, the researchers (naturally) looked that
way for inspiration.
Along with allowing for a compact layout, the
sunflower pattern removed obstacles like blocking and shading by neighbouring
heliostats. One such naturally-occurring pattern is the Fermat spiral, which is
found in the spiraling pattern of florets in daisies and - fittingly -
sunflowers. The Fermat spiral has long fascinated mathematicians who have found
that each sunflower floret is turned at a "golden angle" of about 137
degrees with respect to its neighbor. According to the calculations made by the
researchers, the florets on the sunflower head occurring in a natural Fermat
spiral pattern tilt at an angle of 137°. This pattern helped eradicate the
shading and blocking issue commonly faced by heliostats in most CSP fields.
MIT's Alexander Mitsos says laying heliostats out in
such a spiral pattern could significantly cut the costs of CSP plants by
reducing the amount of land and the number of heliostats required to generate an
equivalent amount of energy.
Read More:
No comments:
Post a Comment