ANti-​SOiLing COa­ting for he­li­o­stats - AN­SOL­CO

Pro­ject sum­ma­ry

One of the main pro­blems of CSP plants lo­ca­ted in arid areas with lack of water is soiling, which drasti­cal­ly de­crea­ses the mir­ror re­flec­tance. The op­ti­cal per­for­mance of the he­li­o­stats is a key fac­tor to achie­ving low electri­ci­ty costs: a 1% de­crea­se in re­flec­tance di­rect­ly leads to 1% in­crea­se in the cost of electri­ci­ty ge­ne­ra­ted. Mo­reo­ver, clea­ning he­li­o­stats uses 10% of the water con­sump­ti­on in a CSP plant. AN­SOL­CO pro­ject aims to de­ve­lop a low cost and dura­ble anti-​soiling coa­ting based on sol-​gel for he­li­o­stats, with the ob­jec­ti­ve of re­du­cing the water con­sump­ti­on and num­ber of main­ten­an­ce ope­ra­ti­ons, and in­crea­sing the electri­ci­ty pro­duc­tion of the plant. The AN­SOL­CO coa­tings will re­du­ce the need for clea­ning by 40% and in­crea­se the aver­age re­flec­tance by 4% in lo­ca­ti­ons with major soiling pro­blems. The water con­sump­ti­on for clea­ning at CSP plants is ex­pec­ted to drop by 45% with the anti-​soiling coa­tings, with re­duc­tion in both of clea­ning ope­ra­ti­ons fre­quen­cy and la­bour costs.