Decarbonization of industrial processes: technologies, applications and perspectives of low-temperature solar heat (80-150°C)

Low-temperature (80-150°C) solar collectors guarantee a very high efficiency (up to 60%) in the conversion of solar radiation into useful thermal energy. Moreover, solar thermal technologies are already reliable solutions, relatively cheap and widely available in the market. For that reason, solar collectors operating at low temperatures are among the most important sustainable technologies that can reduce the fossil fuel consumption of industrial processes and their corresponding carbon footprint. Unfortunately, Solar Heat for Industrial Processes (SHIP) is still mostly unused for several reasons, e.g., not easy identification of the appropriate applications (e.g., cleaning processes, drying, desalination) or lack of knowledge of the potential environmental and economic benefit of the use of SHIP technologies. For that reason, this work includes i) an overview of solar technologies for low/medium -temperature SHIP (80-150°C) ii) results obtained on the innovative design of the mirrors used in evacuated receiver tube by means of a variation in the shape of its internal reflector iii) estimation of CO2 saving using a solar field based on evacuated tube collector (ETC). The work also includes a comparison of the standard ETC solar plant with an ETC solar plant embedded with reflectors with innovative shape.