Integrating solar technologies into coal-fired power plants could ease the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
Vishwanath Haily Dalvi of the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai, India, and his colleagues looked at solar thermal technology, which collects the Sun's energy as heat. The team reports that injecting this heat into the conventional power-generation process reduces the amount of fossil fuel that needs to be burned in power plants by up to 50%. Solar-aided plants such as ones in Egypt (pictured) and Algeria are therefore a more economical way of reducing fossil-fuel use than retrofitting existing plants with carbon-capture technology, the authors say.
Widespread deployment of such power plants will require economic incentives similar to those offered by some countries for generating electricity completely from solar thermal plants, they say.
Nature Clim. Change http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2717 (2015)
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Sun's heat could cut fossil-fuel use. Nature 523, 386–387 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/523384a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/523384a
