SOLAR REPLACING OIL

CSP counters oil price volatility, gains credibility as a fuel saver
Jason Deign, 5 April 2011 (CSP Today)

"While most attention in CSP to date has focused on power generation, the potential for solar to displace traditional fuels in industrial processes is gaining credibility as oil prices spike…Ironically…Atlantic Richfield Company [now BP] is said to have pioneered the use of solar towers to produce steam for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) back in the 1980s…

"…[T]here is growing interest in the technology from other quarters…Shell last year green-lighted a project to use parabolic troughs for EOR-destined steam generation in Oman…Chevron is working with BrightSource on a 29MW-plant which will be completed this year…providing steam for EOR in [California]…As oil prices continue to climb, there is growing enthusiasm for the fuel economies that it can bring to a wide range of industrial sectors. But developers are only just beginning to catch on…"

The idea is to use solar power to drive the CO2 injection. (click to enlarge)

"Sopogy’s thermal business has been growing at more than 100% a year…and most of the company’s projects now fall into this area…Sopogy has carried out thermal projects in countries ranging from the United States to Japan or Papua New Guinea, covering applications from water heating to desalination and industrial drying. It has even experimented on the use of CSP for hydrogen production…

"…[T]here may currently be around 100 thermal projects in operation worldwide but [there may be the potential for thousands]...[A] major advantage is that the cost of energy is free once the plant has been built, giving most installations a payback time of between three and seven years…This payback time is looking more attractive as fuel prices go up and the CSP technology involved improves. And it is further helped by the fact that for thermal applications there really is no other green tech alternative that can deliver the same efficiencies…"

click to enlarge

"In places such as California there may be an added incentive for industrial concerns to bring in CSP, because limits on CO2 emissions may otherwise restrict the scale of their operations…[T]he only thing that seems to be preventing more widespread use of CSP in industrial processes is simply lack of awareness…

"…[F]ood processing [and agriculture in general are] a good fit for CSP thermal…[as is] air conditioning…Whatever the killer application, and it seems as though there could be several, the fact is that thermal-industrial uses of CSP appear to represent a massive untapped market for the industry…"