Beyond zero talks to Dr Matteo Chiesa of Masdar Institute in Masdar City near Abu Dhabi

Masdar is noted for their Masdar city project to create a high performance zero emissions city.  In this interview we talk about one of their main projects and that is testing and scaling solar beam down towers for comercial deployment in the United Arab Emirates.  The towers are from the work of Tokyo Institute of Technology and are pre commercial at this stage but hold a lot of promise.  Konica Minolta high perfomance mirrors are used at the top of the tower to beam down the point focus of the ground based mirror fields.   The Towers are claimed to individually scale to 10MWe and then be installed in an array to get up to utility scale.  ie 10 towers per 100MWe

Matteo Chiesa is Professor at the Laboratory for Energy and Nano Science at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

He is researching nano structure materials for thermo electric power generation for field energy transfer and Masdar have begun to test a concentrating thermal plant – known as the “Beamdown Project”.

Matteo has always been interested in energy and the most efficient pathways for its production and thus found his way to renewable energy.

The Masdar Project, a collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), includes the creation of a zero carbon city in the middle of the desert, the Masdar City, with a graduate University, where all research will be related to alternative energy.

Matteo’s first exposure to renewable energy was in Norway with their production of electricity from hydropower. He later had experience with thermo-electronics with MIT.

The Beamdown Project involves a consortia of companies including the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Cosmo Oil and Mitsui. Matteo first became involved in this project in 1997 when he was at MIT exploring solar thermals. He credits the original idea to a Japanese Professor T (Tamamura?). Matteo is his academic counterpart. A prototype was proposed in Israel approximately ten years ago.

The main difference between this idea and traditional solar power towers is that the heliostats reflect all the light to another mirror mounted on top of the tower that ‘re-reflects’ the radiation to the ground ie. the collector is on the ground and not at the top of the tower. This provides more flexibility in terms of which kind of receiver is used and which process is tried.

The consortia of partners is aiming to create a monolithic hyperbolic mirror that has a defined focal point which redirects the light from the heliostat to the ground. To clarify – a large field of heliostats focus light on another set of mirrors on top of the towers (48 mirrors) - which then concentrate light on a closer, narrower beam at the bottom of the tower. (The mirror does not heat up if the reflectivity is 100%. The mirrors developed have a reflectivity of 98%!).

Advantages of this technology:

1. Better transfer of heat flux (minimizing projection losses).
2. Tower is cheaper to manufacture.

 ie. able to collect a higher amount of solar radiation with reduced losses into the working fluid.

Abu Dhabi’s climate has an issue with the high level of particulates in the atmosphere. This makes it harder to concentrate the light. The multiple towers reduce this light diffusion problem.

The current operating temperatures are approx 500 degrees celcius and could get up to 600-700 degrees celcius. The main point of the 100KW thermal power plants is to test the optical properties of the overall field. ie. they are not producing power as such, but are looking to further develop the optics and these kinds of layouts to work towards a larger power plant in the future.

The Masdar Solar Platform is aiming to use heat to feed an absorption chiller, to create cooling power ie. they are seeking an alternative way to provide cooling (approx 70% of peak power consumption in Abu Dhabi is due to cooling in summer). The research is looking into the best special coatings and self-cleaning mechanisms for the mirrors in preference to night cleaning as there is a need to minimize water use.

The maximum scale of one single tower will produce 10MW of (electrical) power. If there are five to six towers, power production will bring the cost of electricity down to 10c (US).

Matteo observed that Australia produces a great deal of solar technology but is not using it! They are looking for collaborators whose work can be applied at the Masdar Institute.

The Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi (Masdar City) is hosting the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). This is the first time such an international agency has located in the Middle East. This underlines the commitment of Abu Dhabi to maintain its role as energy supplier to the world and recognizes that the future is in renewable energy. The idea is to create ‘know how’ and new technology through the Masdar Institute. 

The Masdar Institute

http://www.masdar.ac.ae/search/index.aspx

Beyond Zero talks to Dr Matteo Chiesa of the Masdar Institute

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