It is a huge solar field from which the heat for Avery Dennison's packaging production in Turnhout, Belgium, will come in the future. A total of 2,240 surface mirrors concentrate the incident sunlight, achieving a peak yield of 2.7 gigawatt hours of thermal energy. This is stored in six thermal storage modules with a capacity of five megawatt hours.
Replacing 2.3 gigawatt hours of natural gas
Currently, the platform consisting of the solar field and the thermal storage unit is being built on an area of about 5,540 square metres in Tunrhout. According to the project partners, once completed it will be the largest installation of parabolic mirrors in combination with thermal energy storage units at an industrial site in Europe.
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When in operation, the plant will supply heat equivalent to the gas consumption of 2.3 gigawatt hours. This will reduce the plant's greenhouse gas emissions by an average of nine per cent per year compared to current levels. In the summer months and when there is a lot of sunlight, the plant can actually cover the entire heating demand of the factory.
Thermal battery stores the heat
The concentrating solar thermal (CST) plant is currently being built by Azteq. The company from Genk, Belgium, specialises in the installation, operation and maintenance of such large solar thermal plants. The parabolic mirrors will concentrate the incident sunlight and transfer the bundled energy to an absorbent fluid - in this case thermal oil. This flows through a collector pipe. The heat that is not directly consumed is temporarily stored in the thermal battery that Energynest contributes to the project. This allows the system to deliver safe, green heat at a high temperature level when needed, even when the sun is not shining.
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Control shifts the heat
The solar field, thermal storage unit and heat distribution system at the Avery Dennison production facility are connected by the Balance-of-Plant (BoP) control system developed by process heat specialist Aura from Germersheim in Rhineland-Palatinate. This shifts the heat between the sources and the sinks. The solar heat is thus used to operate drying ovens used during the coating process of pressure-sensitive adhesive products that Abery Dennison manufactures in Tunrhout for the automotive, construction and medical technology industries, among others.
Supported by the EU, Belgium and Germany
Financing for the entire project has been secured by the Belgian citizen eco-investor Campina Energie from Turnhout. Further money comes from the EU, which is funding the storage unit under Horizon 2020.
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Azteq's CST platform is in turn partly funded by the Flemish government under the Green Heat call. The control platform was developed as part of the #Modulus research project, which is partly funded by the German Ministry of Economic Affairs. (su/mfo)
