EMSP - Évora Molten Salt Platform
EMSP - Évora Molten Salt Platform is a network of experimental infrastructures of the University of Évora, located in the Mitra Pole, which integrates various equipment, articulated in various research segments such as EMSP-ALFR, EMSP-HPS2 and EMSP-NEWSOL.
According to scientific research on solar energy concentration, it is concluded that the use of molten salts as a heat transfer fluid has been considered important to decrease the final energy cost (LCOE). In addition to being used as a heat transfer fluid in linear solar concentration systems, this fluid can be used as a heat storage medium, and this stored energy can be used in periods without direct sunlight and even at night, providing greater energy dispatchability. In addition, the cost of acquiring molten salts is substantially lower than that of thermal oils currently used in commercial solar plants and is considered less toxic to the environment. In this context, several projects are being developed on the EMSP platform to prove and validate the viability of this type of solar thermal power plants, using molten salt as a heat transfer and storage fluid, and to validate various mixtures of salts.
Equipment: The solar field consists of 36 cylinder-parabolic collectors of large dimension, with a total length of 684 meters and a nominal power of 3.4 MW thermal. It has a solar hydraulic loop, where molten salts circulate. The storage system consists of two tanks, one cold and the other hot, with a capacity of 35m3 each. It provides for the inclusion of experimental thermal storage tanks, using innovative materials, in a single tank system using different materials: thermocline and concrete, with a volume of 30m3. The infrastructure network will also have the installation of a 28m x 28m ALFR - Advanced Linear Fresnel Reflector solar concentrator test field, which uses molten salts as heat transfer fluid and as a heat storage medium. These infrastructures function as a test field in solar thermoelectric generation.