Replacement of Fossil Fuel by Means of Hybrid Energy: A Literature Review

Summary
-rational for the work, its aim, the methodology, the expected outcomes, and their Significance.

Introduction and Background

Environment is currently the worlds concerning issue

Aim and Objectives

The purpose of this project is to identify and explore opportunities for combined sustainable energy as a replacement for carbon intense fossil fuels within the constraints of the South Australian industries. Particular emphasis is placed on the practicability of this hybrid technology for direct applications to harness energy for an industrial process. It is expected that the efficiency of a hybrid system would be better compared to the efficiency gain from fossil fuels system. .

Literature Review

Geothermal Energy
Energy from the earths core is directly transferred to the earths mantle through heat transfer. The main heat transfer mechanism involved is conduction which generally is a slow process due to the low thermal conductivity of rocks. Geothermal energy is available without hesitation under the earths surface because of enormous volcanic activities that have been present within the earth. Geothermal energy is not only available through conduction heat transfer but it is also accessible through convection heat transfer. This form of geothermal energy is generally obtained through geysers and hot springs which are brought up to the surface of the earth by convection heat transfer. Nowadays, geothermal energy is mostly used to generate electricity and direct use application. By end of 2010, an estimate of thermal power installed for utilisation was almost 50,583MWt and thermal energy consumption was 121,696 GWh/year. (Lund, 2010) The distribution of thermal energy is 49% for ground source heat pump, 25% for bathing and swimming, 15% for space heating, 5% for greenhouse heating, 3% for industrial application and 3% for other usage. Because of its inexhaustible availability, geothermal energy is considered to be a reliable renewable energy. It is also environmental friendly, sustainable and cost effective. The only drawback is that geothermal energy is only accessible at areas near tectonic plate boundaries. With correct method of obtaining, storing and utilising it has a potential to displace fossil fuel thus reducing the global warming effect. In this report, we will be concentrating most of our resources based in Australia. The main focus of this report is the direct use of geothermal energy cooperated with solar thermal energy. Exploration for geothermal energy in Australia has rapidly increased in the past five years; most of the researches have been based in

Melbourne, Adelaide, Hobart and Geelong. Geothermal energy obtained in Australia is currently limited to an 80kW power plant operating in Birdsville, Queenland since 1992 and only 7MWt of its energy is been utilised for direct use applications. (Beardsmore and Hill, 2010) According to the Australian Energy Resource Assessment, the potential of geothermal energy in Australia should be researched and exploited as soon as possible because it is known that if only 1% of the geothermal resources are exploited at a depth of 5km and temperature of 150C, it could provide 190 million PJ of energy which is enough to supply Australia for thousands of years. (CSIRO, 2011) There are three main types of geothermal energy exist in the world till today. The first of them is the volcanic system. The heat trapped below insulating materials underground causes these resources to produce extremely high temperature gradients. The volcanic systems are generally the hottest compared to the radioactive and non volcanic systems. Volcanic activities are associated with areas of high crustal heat flow along the plate boundaries causing the heat to move into the upper crust by magnetic intrusions or convective fluid flow. (Huddlestone-Holmes, 2011) The second category of geothermal energy is the Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). EGS gets it heat from decaying radioactive potassium, uranium and thorium. In Australia, the Copper Basin, South Australia was the first enterprise to perform hydrofracturing testing. Its location is very ideal for geothermal development in Australia due to the buried radioactive underneath the earth for years. To develop a EGS system or also known as Hot Rock resource, the three basic components needed to be present are het source, a reservoir with permeable rock and fluid to extract the heat and move it up to the surface. (Geoscience Australia, 2010) The hot rock underneath the earths surface is generally hard and has less permeability. To overcome this problem, engineers build artificial reservoirs and high pressured fluid is injected into the bore holes of the reservoir to fracture the rocks. This process is called hydrofracturing. (Geoscience Australia, 2010) The final geothermal resource is the Hot Sedimentary Aquifer (HSA) or also known as the conductive sedimentary systems. The main heat transfer for the HSA is conduction heat transfer where the reservoirs contain hot water and high permeability. As working fluid is pumped through these large volumes of water and high permeability, the fluids are extracted at the high flow rates required. The geothermal systems present in Australia are the EGS and HAS categories. This is due to stable location of Australia away from the tectonic plates which causes volcanic activities when they move. For this report the EGS method will be used to draw heat out from the geothermal rocks at the earths core. As discussed early, this project would be combining geothermal energy with solar thermal energy for an

industrial process, therefore all the dissipated heat from the solar thermal energy will be innovated with solar thermal produced heat to heat up our process. Figure 1 below shows the EGS system that will be used for this project. It comprises of hot hydrofractured rocks, working fluid (water) and a heat exchanger.

Cold Water

Hot Water

Hydrofractured Hot Rocks (EGS)

Radioactive Heat (Q)

Figure 1: Proposed EGS method

Similar to the EGS method, cold water is injected into the reservoir through the injection wells. An assumption suitable to be made at this stage is that all the rocks underneath the earths surface have already been hydro-fractured. As the rocks are heated from decaying radioactive, the cold water travelling through the rocks picks up the heat through conduction. It then comes out through the production well with a temperature ranging between 150C to 185 C. (B.A. Goldstein, 2009) The produced hot water travels through a heat exchanger where the heat from the hot water is transferred to another working fluid (i.e oil). As the water now becomes cold, it is reinjected back into the reservoir to repeat the process.

Solar Thermal
The heat generated from the sun is inexhaustible. The sun is located 150 millions km away from the Earth and has a diameter of 1.4 million km. The sun emits about 3.8 x 1023 kW of energy everyday and in which 1.8 x 1014 kW of energy is been penetrated in to the earths layer. In Australia, solar radiation per area per year ranges between 1500 to 1900 kWh/m2.yr which amounts to the highest solar radiation in the world. (Lovegrove, 2006) In recent events, the world demand of fossil fuel exceeds the annual demand every year; we can expect that the existence of fossil fuel is dropping drastically year by year. About 80% of all processes whether direct or indirect application, rely on fossil

fuel to deliver utilisation energy for their processes. (M. Thirugnanasambandam et al, 2010) Risk associated with the usage of fossil fuel is becoming more noticeable especially to the earths environment. Burning of fossil fuel emits dangerous gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, aerosols and many more. These gases then cause environmental climate problems such as acid rain and global warming. Therefore with all these problems arising, the need of a renewable energy is in demand. Many technologies have suggested using solar radiation to convert into energy that is considered green and economical. Direct or indirect utilisation of the suns energy is available in todays world. For example, the solar water heater is already accessible in Australia and other parts of the world. Solar energy is also used in direct industrial applications such as water purification and distillation. Similarly to geothermal energy resources, solar thermal energy has three methods of conversion. It converts the solar radiation into useable energy. The three categories of conversion are photothermal conversion, photovoltaic conversion and photochemical conversion. In photothermal conversion, optical absorbers absorb solar radiation. The solar radiation that consists of the energy of the photon is converted into thermal energy. Insulation on the absorbers may vary the outlet fluid temperature. Generally, the fluid temperature ranges between 50C to 175C without solar concentration. With solar concentration, the system is capable to produce direct use temperatures ranging between 600C to 1200C. Its application ranges from passive heating to domestic heating to industrial heating such as distillation and drying, electrical energy production through huge solar thermal plants and building heating. (Ullham Encyclopedia) The second category is photovoltaic conversion. Direct solar radiation which contains photon energy is converted into excited energy of electrical charge carriers. Semiconductor solar cells such as silicon have current densities of 300A/m2 at a solar voltage of 50.5V. This kind of technology is commonly found on solar operated calculators where they have a solar panel on the screen of the calculator to substitute the battery. It is also available through decentralised autonomous power supplies such as telecommunication domestic power supplies. (Ullham Encyclopedia) The third and final solar radiation converter is the photochemical energy conversion. This system is not broadly researched yet however in this type of conversion, photons are absorbed directly increasing the chemical potential of the reactants. (Ullham Encyclopedia) In contrast with the other systems, this system has relatively low energy of photon. However, by combining all the three systems together, it is possible to obtain high temperature electrolysis process. (Ullham Encyclopedia) The utilisation of solar energy is now approaching a greater level. Technologies have shown that to reduce the emission of carbon and other volatile gases, innovation to fully utilise the solar thermal energy has been possible. The major component of a

solar plant is the solar collectors. These collectors are basically components that absorb all the incoming solar radiation and transfer them into heat energy by excitement of the photon energy. The heat is then transferred to the working fluid of the solar system. The working fluids of the solar system maybe are oil, water, gas or molten salt. For this to occur, the main ingredient is temperature. The temperature plays a major role in determining the type of solar collectors that are used to reflect or transmit heat from one place to another. Non-concentrating and concentrating solar collectors are the two genres of solar collectors available. (Ullham Encyclopedia) A nonconcentrating solar collector is basically stationary at its primary position where it has the same area to intercept and absorb the solar radiation. An example of a nonconcentrating solar collector is the flat plate collector. A concentrating solar collector has a dynamic movement criterion depending where it is located. For locations near the equator of the earth, the north-south direction is preferred whereas higher latitudes locations prefer the east-west alignment. For example, the parabolic trough collector is a type of concentrating collector. (Ullham, Encyclopedia) The sun-tracking solar collector works by concentrating all the sun reflection onto a reflecting surface which then focuses all the suns beam onto a small receiver mainly tubes containing working fluid. The small area of the tube has a high heat flux radiation which allows for higher temperature operations to take place. For utilisation of low temperatures (< 50C), the flat plate collectors are used. For temperature ranges up to 100C, solar plants use solar collectors with one or two transparent covers and certain absorbers surface. As some of the direct use application demands for temperature utilisation above 150C, there is where the solar concentrating collectors come in consideration. Table 1 illustrates the types of solar collectors available in the market.

Table 1: Solar Energy Collectors (Resouuce: S.A. Kalogirou / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 30 (2004) 231295)

Basically, these solar collector systems are made up of reflective mirrors. The temperature obtained is typically dependent on the degree of concentration (C). Degree of concentration is actually the ration of aperture area of the collector to the area of the solar image in the focal plane. (Ullham Encyclopaedia, Solar) The degree of concentration is dependent on the quality and types of the collectors used to reflect the solar radiation. Figure XXX shows the concentration degrees of various reflectors and its maximums theoretical absorber temperature as a function of contact angle.

Figure 2: Concentration degrees of various reflectors and its maximums theoretical absorber temperature as a function of contact angle (Resource: Ullham Encyclopedia)

From the figure, (a) represents a paraboloidal mirror; (b) Fresnel lens, n = 100; (c) Screen Mirror, n = 100; (d) Spherical Mirror; (e) Paraboloid type cylinder mirror; (f) Circular cylindrical mirror, where n is the number of segments in the mirror. For this report, it is necessary to obtain medium to high temperature ranging to about 400C to be used as a heating medium for the working fluid travelling from the geothermal section of the design to be applicable in the industrial process. The solar collector that fits in this category is the Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC). PTC is design by bending the sheet reflecting material into parabolic shapes. A black coated metal tube covered with glass tube containing the working fluid that is passing through the focal line of the receiver. The function of the glass tube is to reduce the convective heat loss from the receiver to the surrounding. To be able to size the tube accordingly to the collector, we need to first determine the size of the suns ray that will reflect the image onto the trough. As the glass material covers the tube, it becomes the middle material between the direct contact of the tube and the rays. Due to this, the rays will have to penetrate the glass cover first before reaching the tube, this account for transmittance loss roughly valued to 0.9. (SA Kalogirou. 2004) The surface of the receiver is always coated with a material that has high absorption for solar radiation but low emittance for thermal radiation loss. As seen in Figure XXX, when the parabola is pointed in the direction of the sun radiation, parallel rays of the sun are reflected from the reflector to the receiver tube. The PTC uses a single axis tracking system of the sun. As discussed earlier, the collectors are placed in an east-west position to track the sun from north to south and vice versa.

Figure 3: Schematic design of a parabolic trough collector (Resource: S.A. Kalogirou / Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 30 (2004) 231295)

Innovation of Geothermal and Solar Thermal Energy

The method of combining solar and geothermal energy to be used as a substitute for fossil fuel is a totally new approach in the research and development (RND) sector. In this project, we will use the approach by novelty integration of these two energy sources to be used in an industrial process.

There are a few industrial processes that might be used in this project. Among those industrial processes that are nominated only one will be chosen as an example to demonstrate how the innovation of solar boosted energy can be cooperated with it. The industrial processes that are initially chosen are hydro-treatment (Hydrodesulphurisation of HDS) of naphtha, fast pyrolysis processes and the catalytic naphtha reforming process. As the research continues, there might be a change in the chosen processes due to unseen circumstances. However a brief introduction of why the selected processes stated earlier are chosen is given below. In the process of hydro-treatment (Hydrodesulphurisation of HDS) of naphtha, a heater is used to preheat the feed inlet that consists of naphtha and hydrogen to an elevated temperature of 350C to 400 C. (Matsuda.K, 2009) The ingredient for the heater units are fired gas or oil (fossil fuel). Therefore by the novel integration of solar boosted geothermal energy, we can substitute the fossil fuel thus reduce the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Indirectly it might also improve the efficiency of the heater. This is an area of investigation for the future report. For the fast pyrolysis process, the heating rate required per unit time is in the range of 100 C to 1000 C. In the fast pyrolysis of biomass, drying of the feed is an important issue; normally it would be done by feeding the raw material into a low grade heater which is powered by the burning of char using a rotary kiln, the incineration of fossil fuel or the recirculation of the flue gas from by-product gas. (A.V. Bridgewater et al. 2000) Therefore, for the drying process of the feed stream, these mentioned drying methods might be replaced with solar boosted energy. Technically it will be possible to do it but it still relies on the feasibility of this idea. Reformation of catalytic naphtha is an endothermic process. The main aim of the reformation of catalytic naphtha process is to convert the low rating octane hydrocarbons into more valuable high octane liquid products. The operating temperature and pressures are generally about 450 C to 520C and 4 to 30 bars. The thermo chemical reaction is carried in a series of fixed bed catalyst reactors. (Antos and Aitani, 2004) These fixed bed reactors are connected to heaters that give the heat to the reactors. These heaters are fired using a fuel oil system which generally is natural gas. (Antos and Aitani, 2004) To continue producing heat to the reactors, the heaters should always remain hot. To make sure they are hot, a stream of hot natural gas should always be heating the heaters up. Therefore, maybe using the integrated solar boosted geothermal system may reduce the usage of natural gas and improve the heat efficiency produced to the heaters.

Methodology

Significance and Novelty

This research project involves a relatively new technology innovation in the research and development sector. This research project is going to make me think out of the box and also will enable me to apply and utilise my engineering knowledge, I am able to come up with an integrated solar boosted geothermal energy technology. This will broaden my knowledge on something that I have not been exposed to before

Timeline

No. 1 * * * * * * * * * * * * * 2 3 4

Task Dissertation Abstract Introduction Geothermal Energy Solar Thermal Energy Industry Process Solar Boosted Geothermal Application Literature Review Mass/Energy Balance Economics Conclusion/Referencing Formatting Proof Reading Submission Progress Report Poster presentation Project diary

Start

End/Due 2 3 4 5 6

Weeks 7 8 9 10 11

01/08/2011 14/10/2011 19/09/2011 01/08/2011 08/08/2011 16/08/2011 23/08/2011 08/08/2011 03/08/2011 08/08/2011 29/08/2011 7/08/2011 15/08/2011 22/08/2011 29/08/2011 12/09/2011 20/09/2011 29/08/2011 12/09/2011

21/09/2011 23/09/2011 10/10/2011 14/10/2011 01/08/2010 19/09/2011 25/07/2011 17/08/2011 20/10/2011 14/10/2011

Resources

Management