Feasibility study and performance analysis of a hydrid solar-biomass (firewood) steam generation system for tea drying in Rwanda black tea processing plants. Case study: Mata tea processing plant

Abstract

This research thesis aims at the feasibility study, design and performance analysis of using Concentrated Solar thermal technology combined with biomass (firewood) thermal energy technology as a hybrid renewable energy system to supply the process heat requirements in tea drying step for Rwanda black tea processing plants. The hybrid thermal system for tea drying under study is constituted by a solar thermal energy production technology for tea drying and combined with a usual thermal energy production technology with the use of fire tube boilers. The solar thermal system under study is based on the use of Parabolic Trough solar Collector (PTC) as it has high optical efficiency. It outlines the some literatures manifesting the similarities to this research topic and extracts the gaps that my research project expects to overcome. It gives also the basic concepts that outline some theories about solar collectors that include Flat Plate solar collectors (FPC), Concentrated Solar Collectors (CSC), their industrial applications and arbitrary instances, solar thermal energy storage techniques to overcome solar resource intermittency. It has also the simulation part with System Advisor Model (SAM) software version 2023.12.17 offered freely by US National Renewable Energy Laboratory for renewable energy projects simulations. The SAM software requires the simulation key parameters to consider such as site meteorological data, annual thermal energy demand in Mega-watt thermal for Mata tea processing plant, Thermal Energy storage System (TES) hours for system resilience upon solar energy intermittency mitigating, Solar multiple(SM) which is a factor of designing solar field size to optimize the system functionality and feasibilities. It also makes results analysis and discussion then establish the concluding paragraphs and lastly addresses some recommendations to the Rwanda black tea processing plants proprietors.