An investigation on factors influencing dust accumulation on CSP mirrors

Abstract

The profitability of a CSP plant is highly affected by the efficiency of the solar field: it is essential to maintain mirrors' reflectivity at high level to avoid thermal power loss. Dust fouling is the main cause of reflectivity loss and cleaning of mirrors is a crucial activity to restore economical level of reflectivity. However, the high cost of cleaning operations requires the study and identification of a balanced plan for the dust removal. The dust generation and transport to the plant site is the first mechanism that needs to be modelled to identify the optimal schedule for cleaning operations and it is highly dependent on weather conditions. Several studies have suggested a dependency of reflectors performance with humidity level, frequency of rainfalls, wind and mirrors' tilting angle, however rarely quantitative correlation studies have been performed to validate these hypotheses. The aim of this research is to provide an in-depth insight on interaction between the main parameters and airborne dust concentration, providing quantitative information for the development of future mirror dusting models. Outcomes evidence the crucial role of high winds responsible of dust concentration in conjunction with higher wind direction frequencies in the range 60-120. Actually, in this scenario a perfectly monotonic increase of dust accumulation in the air has been observed with high correspondence of wind direction. A very low effect is provided by the ambient temperature as the contribution of the barometric pressure.