Abstract :

Since only arid and semi-arid areas are more suitable for power plants with concentrated solar power (CSP) or Engineered Geothermal System (EGS), dry cooling may offer the only effective alternative for these renewable power plants. However, reports showed that dry cooling installed in trough solar plants in hot deserts reduced annual electricity production by 7% and increased the cost of the produced electricity by about 10%. To address the performance problem of dry cooling used in these renewable power plants, hybrid cooling technologies were proposed and will be tested by the Queensland Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence (QGECE). This talk will focused on the hybrid cooling research carried by the University of Queensland during the last three years Zhiqiang Guan has worked in experimental and numerical analysis on cooling technologies and heat transfer for geothermal and solar power plants with Queensland Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence (QGECE), The University of Queensland for the last 5 years. He has, in particular, worked on natural draft cooling tower structural design and analysis, hybrid spray cooling, and solar enhanced natural draft cooling. The experimental work he is involved include the wind tunnel tests for spray cooling, which requires the use of advanced flow visualisation technologies of PDPA and PIV. The numerical analysis includes CFD simulation. Prior to joining the QGECE, Zhiqiang Guan worked with CRCMining, The University of Queensland, on the development of mining technologies for more than 10 years. The industry experience with CRCMining include the mining equipment and structure design, dynamic modelling, finite element modelling, fatigue analysis, conditional monitoring, experimental stress analysis, mechanical vibration, equipment maintenance and the reliability analysis. Most of his work has been translated to commercial outcomes, some of which receiving accolades from industry and professional organisations. Examples are, Engineering Excellence Award (Commendation) from the Institution of Engineers (Queensland) for the innovative design of a new mining machine technology (“Universal Dragline”). This technology is now being commercialised by the CRCMining spin-off Unidig and CRCMining partner P&H. Research Excellence Award 2004 for the Best Underground Coal Mining Research Project completed with ACARP assistance : “Longwall Automation” “Oscillating Disc Cutter” – a revolutionary machine to mine hard rock commercialised through Joy for South African reefs and Herrenknecht of Germany for other applications His interests will be in the areas of experimental tests (especially in wind tunnel research), instrumentation, CFD, nozzle spray, renewable energy, cooling and heat exchanger etc.