Charge time of the storage material of the tank for a solar power plant

Concentrating power plant coupling with thermal energy storage system is a popular technology during the solar application process or solar power plant, and researches for the performance of thermal energy storage for concentrating solar power plant have performed over the past four decades and are ongoing. In this paper, temperature distribution and the effects of the parameters i.e., heat conductivity, heat transfer length, inlet velocity, and the diameter of the tube, on the charge time of the storage tank have been investigated based on numerical simulation. The results show that the charge time for the storage tank is about 23 600 s before changing the parameters of the model. The charge time of the storage tank increases with increasing the heat transfer length and decreasing the heat conductivity, inlet velocity, and the diameter of the tube. The results can provide a reference to the state-of-the-art design of solar storage system.