Development of an innovative code for the design of thermodynamic solar power plants part A: Code description and test case

This paper presents an innovative code for predicting performances, as well as preliminary plant sizing and investment costs estimation, for different parabolic trough solar fields operating at nominal conditions. The code allows a preliminary design of the solar field lay-out, the sizing of the main components of the plant and the optimization of the steam cycle. The code, named PATTO (PArabolic Trough Thermodynamic Optimization), allows to separately calculate the thermal efficiency of parabolic trough systems in commerce as well as combination of components of various commercial systems, in order to exploit different technology solutions: combination of mirrors, receivers and supports. The code is flexible in terms of heat transfer fluid, temperature and pressure range. Regarding the power block, a conventional steam cycle with super-heater and re-heater sections and up to seven regenerative bleedings is adopted. In part A of the paper a detailed description of the code is presented, with calibration toward real applications and reference values found in literature. Part B reveals capability of the code in predicting performances of different solar technologies and their costs. Finally an innovative solar plant configuration is proposed.