Durable Surfaces for Concentrating Solar Power

Increasing the share of renewables in the European energy mix is critical for the security of energy supply and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. This project, titled “Framework of Innovation for Engineering of New Durable Solar Surfaces (FRIENDS2)", aimed at establishing a European network to transfer knowledge and foster innovative culture for development of concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies.

Together with our project partners, we designed and developed novel durable coatings for each key CSP components (reflectors, receivers, and containers for heat storage) to accelerate the development of next generation CSP with higher operating temperature. Cranfield was leading the research to address the issue of hot corrosion caused by the extensive use of highly corrosive molten salts at high temperature for storing the excess thermal energy for electricity generation off-sun.

We developed corrosion resistant coatings that can be applied to typical stainless steel substrates to suppress the corrosion and extend the usage lifetime of the components while maintaining their structural integrity. It is worth noting that the knowledge transfer activities were carried out by intersectoral secondments between the academic and private sectors.

Progress updates

Our findings on corrosion resistant coatings can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42247-021-00334-y.