Supercritical steam

[Music plays and text appears: Supercritical solar steam: the new frontier for power generation]

[Image changes to show an array of mirrors reflecting sunlight onto a solar tower and then moves to show moving solar panels]

[Image changes to show Mike Collins, Research Projects Officer, CSIRO Energy Technology]

Mike Collins: Solar thermal energy works by concentrating sunlight using mirrors. The light is then shone up on top of the tower where there’s a solar receiver and in that receiver there’s a panel of tubes which steam is flowing inside. That steam is heated to high temperatures and then it flows back down the tower to a turbine at the bottom of the tower, a steam turbine. The steam flowing through that turbine spins the generator to generate electricity.

[Image changes to show Robbie McNaughton, Research Projects Officer, CSIRO Energy Technology]

Robbie McNaughton: The temperatures that we’ve obtained are over 550 degrees and at pressures above 24 mega Pascals. This is called supercritical steam generation and it’s a state where steam actually transforms without boiling.

[Camera moves back to the solar panels and solar boiler]

The steam conditions that we’ve achieved are comparable to what is running at the moment in fossil fuel power stations. So we’re able to actually either displace the steam that goes into these, reducing the fossil fuel reliance, or in some cases maybe even replace fossil fuel completely.

[Image has changed back to Robbie]

It’s really exciting to work on these types of projects. Doing a world first is always exciting but in this case what we’ve actually been able to do is potentially make a step change in the way solar thermal power is generated.

[Music plays and CSIRO logo appears with text: Big ideas start here www.csiro.au]