Repowering old thermal power station by integrating concentrated solar power technology

The present study aims to investigate technical, economic and environmental aspects of integrating a Parabolic Trough Collector with existing feed-water heating system in an old "33 MW unit" in Al-Hussein Thermal Power Plant in Jordan. Such integration should improve the performance of the existing power plant and reduce the rate of fuel consumption, consequently the resultant pollutants', including Greenhouse Gases (GHG), emissions will be reduced. System Advisor Model software was used as a simulation tool in this study to optimize the required solar field aperture area and to predict the performance of employed solar system. Thermodynamic basic relations, energy and mass balances, are used to simulate various main components of the existing standard steam, Rankine, cycle. Different scenarios of feed-water heating arrangement with solar-replacement are presented and discussed. It was found that efficiency of the existing power unit could be increased by 3% due to higher turbine's output as a result of increased steam flow rate at later stages of the turbine. The estimated avoided GHG emissions exceed 10,000 ton CO₂ annually. But economics of such system may not be very attractive due to decreasing oil prices: at present the estimated payback period is more than 10 years.