Modeling of a Solar Thermal Plant to Produce Hot Water and Steam for a Brewery Factory

The environmental impact caused by the intensive exploitation of fossil fuels to generate heat and electricity has already reached a critical level. Also, as the industrial sector is the largest energy consumer, mainly in the form of heat, it has then become compulsive to implement the use of renewable solar heat in industrial processes, such as those found in the food processing and beverages industries, which do not require high temperatures. Consequently, this study examines the viability of supplying heat as hot water at 80 °C and saturated steam at 160 °C to a medium-sized brewery factory through a hybrid solar plant composed of flat plate and parabolic trough collectors and sensible thermal energy storage. The study was conducted numerically using the meteorological conditions of a city different from that where the factory is located because it benefits from higher insolation levels. The mean annual solar fractions achieved were 49.9% for hot water production and 37.3% for steam generation, at a levelized cost of heat of 0.032 USD/kWh, which can be considered competitive if compared against the values reported in other similar solar projects. Also, the decrease in fossil fuel consumption allowed an annual reduction of 252 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.