TY - JOUR A1 - Puppe, Michael A1 - Giuliano, Stefano A1 - Frantz, Cathy A1 - Uhlig, Ralf A1 - Schumacher, Ralph A1 - Ibraheem, Wagdi A1 - Schmalz, Stefan A1 - Waldmann, Barbara A1 - Guder, Christoph A1 - Peter, Dennis A1 - Schwager, Christian A1 - Teixeira Boura, Cristiano José A1 - Alexopoulos, Spiros A1 - Spiegel, Michael A1 - Wortmann, Jürgen A1 - Hinrichs, Matthias A1 - Engelhard, Manfred A1 - Aust, Michael T1 - Techno-economic optimization of molten salt solar tower plants JF - AIP Conference Proceedings art.no. 040033 N2 - In this paper the results of a techno-economic analysis of improved and optimized molten salt solar tower plants (MSSTP plants) are presented. The potential improvements that were analyzed include different receiver designs, different designs of the HTF-system and plant control, increased molten salt temperatures (up to 640°C) and multi-tower systems. Detailed technological and economic models of the solar field, solar receiver and high temperature fluid system (HTF-system) were developed and used to find potential improvements compared to a reference plant based on Solar Two technology and up-to-date cost estimations. The annual yield model calculates the annual outputs and the LCOE of all variants. An improved external tubular receiver and improved HTF-system achieves a significant decrease of LCOE compared to the reference. This is caused by lower receiver cost as well as improvements of the HTF-system and plant operation strategy, significantly reducing the plant own consumption. A novel star receiver shows potential for further cost decrease. The cavity receiver concepts result in higher LCOE due to their high investment cost, despite achieving higher efficiencies. Increased molten salt temperatures seem possible with an adapted, closed loop HTF-system and achieve comparable results to the original improved system (with 565°C) under the given boundary conditions. In this analysis all multi tower systems show lower economic viability compared to single tower systems, caused by high additional cost for piping connections and higher cost of the receivers. REFERENCES Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.5067069 VL - 2033 IS - Issue 1 PB - AIP Publishing CY - Melville, NY ER -