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Connacher is a growing exploration, development and production company with a focus on producing bitumen and expanding its in-situ oil sands projects located near Fort McMurray, Alberta
Message: Interesting Technology
From CWEI Message Board...
A new technology has just recently blossomed in Windsor Locks, Conn. with Hamilton Sundstrand, a subsidiary of United Technologies regarding Solar Energy. Rocketdyne made a big hit back in the early '80s with a solar generator field of mirrors that focused a beam of concentrated energy on a vat of water and created steam for generating electricity. The system model was provided a grant from the US Gov't for the developement of a prototype. A new version of the same system, in collaboration with US Renewables Group is being funded this year by the US Energy Dept. utilizing molten salt or solid brine as the heating storage media. A combination mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate (Moten Salt), heated at 1200 deg F can retain it's heat 15 times longer than that of water. This new brine solid mix becomes liquid between 550 and 1200 deg F, and it is being touted as the latest "Renewable" heat transfer fluid. After heating the molten salt to over 1050 deg F, the liquid is stored in a hot tank and throttled into a steam generator, to produce High Pressure Steam, then the Steam is passed through an electric turbine to produce electrical energy. The Molten Salt is then pumped back into the Solar Generator and re-generated for the next cycle. There is only a 1% degradation in the volume of Molten Salt lost to the environment, and the water used can be reclaimed from Steam Condensate discharged from the turbine for regenerating. The system efficiency generated is less than 98% and there is no fossil fuel discharge to the atmosphere. Molten Salt allows the Steam Generator to operate at much higher temperatures and more stable, with less heat loss to the atmosphere. The greater efficiency of the Molten Salt justifies additional expense for added infrastructure in ANSI Piping and Insulation media to transport the hot fluid.
UT states that this type of system will produce up to 550 Megawatt Peak Power and continuous 55 Megawatts, or about enough electricity to run near 1050 households, similar to Consumer's 50 Megawatt Generating Station in Otsego, Michigan. Typically, the only drawback of the system's installation is need for full sunlight during peak load. The regions of the US that are most likely to be utilized would be the South West, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Southern California. Southern EU and Austraila are prime climates that have enough percentage of Solar exposure to justify installation expense of the 1200 acre field of mirrors......called Heliostats.....needed to reflect and concentrate the Sun's energy on the Molten Salt Receiver. The US Dept. of Energy has earmarked an additional $7.8 Million over the next 2 years' departmental budget for Clean Energy Technologies, of which UT has the first shot at gathering. The Los Alamos Lab in Sante Fe is the first application being planned for a 5 megawatt Pilot project utilizing the "Molten Salt" concept. Hamilton Sundstrand has the patent on Rocketdyne's pilot concept and will be in the lime light next year with a 20 year investment of near $7.8 Million for the current fiscal year.
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