The Impact of Solar Resource Characteristics on Solar Thermal Pre-heating of Manganese Ores
The paper was presented at TMS2020 in the Energy Technology 2020: Recycling, Carbon Dioxide Management , and Other Technologies topic. The paper evaluates an alternative ferromanganese production flowsheet seeking to preheat manganese ores with concentrating solar thermal energy to 600°C. The benefits of solar thermal preheating will be evaluated based on a cost discounted economic model taking into account the variability of the solar resource, capital costs and operating costs of a solar thermal plant over the lifetime of the project. Solar variability will be discussed based on possible implementation sites for such technologies and the cost and benefits of thermal storage in the flowsheet are evaluated for locations in Spain, South Africa and China. This work is part of the PreMa project, aiming to advance novel energy systems in the drying and preheating of furnace materials. The PreMa project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 820561.