Heliostat-field gain-scheduling control applied to a two-step solar hydrogen production plant

This article describes a temperature control structure designed for the interior of a solar hydrogen reactor based on a two-step ferrite-redox technology. Until now, this temperature has been controlled by manual selection of the heliostats to be focused on the receiver targets. However, the strong system dependency on operating conditions suggests that the procedure be automated in order to ensure the desired setpoint change response. The aims are to maintain the desired temperatures and to make the setpoint switch as fast as possible, keeping plant conditions within the margins of safety. The scheme proposed includes a procedure for selecting the heliostats to be focused on the reactor by using a simple model of the solar field and a gain scheduling control system which changes the control tuning parameters to deal with the varying dynamics observed during the process. Real experiments show the promising results of this work.

[1]  Lan Xiao,et al.  Advances in solar hydrogen production via two-step water-splitting thermochemical cycles based on metal redox reactions , 2012 .

[2]  Jesús Ballestrín,et al.  Solar radiation attenuation in solar tower plants , 2012 .

[3]  C. Sattler,et al.  Development and test of a solar reactor for decomposition of sulphuric acid in thermochemical hydrogen production , 2012 .

[4]  A. Steinfeld.  Solar thermochemical production of hydrogen--a review , 2005 .

[5]  M. Kostoglou,et al.  Hydrogen production via solar-aided water splitting thermochemical cycles: Combustion synthesis and preliminary evaluation of spinel redox-pair materials , 2012 .

[6]  Lidia Roca,et al.  Modeling of a two-step solar hydrogen production plant , 2012 .

[7]  Piotr Tatjewski,et al.  Iterative Algorithms For Multilayer Optimizing Control , 2005 .

[8]  Manuel Berenguel,et al.  A survey on control schemes for distributed solar collector fields. Part II: Advanced control approaches , 2007 .

[9]  Christian Sattler,et al.  Prospects of solar thermal hydrogen production processes , 2009 .

[10]  Peter Hoffman,et al.  Hydrogen--the optimum chemical fuel , 1994 .

[11]  Pierre Garcia,et al.  Codes for solar flux calculation dedicated to central receiver system applications : A comparative review , 2008 .

[12]  Tatsuya Kodama,et al.  Thermochemical cycles for high-temperature solar hydrogen production. , 2007 .

[13]  Teodoro López-Moratalla,et al.  Computing the solar vector , 2001 .

[14]  I. Dincer,et al.  Sustainable hydrogen production options and the role of IAHE , 2012 .

[15]  Manuel R. Arahal,et al.  An artificial vision-based control system for automatic heliostat positioning offset correction in a central receiver solar power plant , 2004 .

[16]  Manuel Berenguel,et al.  Control of Solar Power Systems: a survey , 2010 .

[17]  Robert Pitz-Paal,et al.  A New Fast Ray Tracing Tool for High-Precision Simulation of Heliostat Fields , 2009 .

[18]  Souzana Lorentzou,et al.  Hydrogen production in solar reactors , 2007 .

[19]  Christian Sattler,et al.  Test operation of a 100 kW pilot plant for solar hydrogen production from water on a solar tower , 2011 .

[20]  Gilles Flamant,et al.  Screening of water-splitting thermochemical cycles potentially attractive for hydrogen production by concentrated solar energy , 2006 .

[21]  Christian Sattler,et al.  Operational strategy of a two-step thermochemical process for solar hydrogen production , 2009 .

[22]  Tore Hägglund,et al.  Automatic Tuning and Adaptation for PID Controllers—A Survey , 1992 .

[23]  Hongguang Jin,et al.  Operational performance of the development of a 15kW parabolic trough mid-temperature solar receiver/reactor for hydrogen production , 2012 .

[24]  I. Shvets,et al.  Finite element method simulations of heat flow in fixed bed solar water splitting redox reactors , 2012 .

[25]  Rong Xu,et al.  Dynamic model of a solar thermochemical water-splitting reactor with integrated energy collection and storage , 2012 .

[26]  Manuel Berenguel,et al.  Heuristic knowledge-based heliostat field control for the optimization of the temperature distribution in a volumetric receiver , 1999 .

[27]  Tasneem Abbasi,et al.  ‘Renewable’ hydrogen: Prospects and challenges , 2011 .

[28]  Jörg Petrasch,et al.  Dynamics and control of solar thermochemical reactors , 2009 .

[29]  Robert Pitz-Paal,et al.  Development of a system model for a hydrogen production process on a solar tower , 2012 .