Commissioning of Europe's largest plant for solar industrial process heat in Turnhout/Belgien
September 7, 2023
Commissioning of Europe's largest plant for solar industrial process heat in Turnhout/Belgien
A parabolic trough system with storage supplies a plant of the Avery Dennison company in Turnhout, Belgium, with solar-generated process heat. It is durrently the largest industrial solar process heat plant in Europe. Image: Avery Dennison.
Credit:
Avery Dennison
Avery Dennison plant in Belgium now dries adhesive tapes with solar heat.
Together with industrial partners, the DLR Institute of Solar Research has developed the power transfer station that connects the solar field with thermal storage and production.
Tinne van der Straeten, Belgian Minister for Energy, personally congratulated the start of operations at the plant on 6 September
The solar field generates heat from temperatures at around 280 degrees Celsius for the partial solar operation of the drying ovens in the production lines for coating adhesive tapes. The products are used in the automotive industry, construction, medical technology and personal care, among others.
A factory belonging to the Avery Dennison company in Turnhout, Belgium, now draws part of its process heat from a parabolic trough solar field. DLR was involved in the development of the balance of plant, the interface between the solar field, heat storage and industrial production.
With a collector surface of 5,540 square meters, the solar plant in Turnhout is currently the largest parabolic trough plant for industrial process heat in Europe.
Tinne Van der Straeten, the Belgian Minister for Energy and representatives of EnergyNest, Avery Dennison, Campina Energy and Azteq press the symbolic start button of the plant. Persons on the picture (from the left): Christian Thiel, CEO EnergyNest, Mariana Rodriguez, Vice President and General Manager Avery Dennison Performance Tapes Europe, Minister Tinne Van der Straeten, Federal Minister of Energy, Jef Van Eyck, CEO Campina Energie, Koen Vermout, CEO Azteq
Credit:
Avery Dennison
Avery Dennison expects an annual yield of up to 2.7 gigawatt hours of thermal energy. In the solar field, parabolic mirrors concentrate the sunlight and direct it onto pipes filled with a silicone oil that converts the solar energy into heat. The hot silicone oil flows from the solar field in a circuit to a heat exchanger and flows back into the solar field after it has transferred the heat there to another thermal oil. In so-called secondary circuits, the heat is conducted to the drying ovens of the production lines for coating adhesive tapes.
According to the company, this will save 2.3 gigawatt hours of gas per year, reducing the plant's greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 9 per cent annually. In the summer months and when solar radiation is high, the plant will cover up to 100 per cent of the plant's heating needs.
"We have set our sights high on tackling climate change and achieving net zero consumption by 2050. To achieve these goals, we will review all our industrial processes and identify opportunities to introduce new technologies to decarbonise and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. The successful commissioning of the Turnhout project is a major step forward in our sustainability plans," says Mariana Rodriguez, General Manager, Avery Dennison Performance Tapes Europe.
Robert Pitz-Paal, Director of the DLR Institute of Solar Research: "The Avery Dennison plant shows that concentrating solar technology can generate high temperatures for production processes even under the solar conditions of Central Europe. It takes visionary companies like Avery Dennison to establish CST for the generation of industrial process heat. I am convinced that this project will also be a role model for industrial companies in Germany."
In a panel discussion experts from industry and research discussed the potential of concentrated solar heat for industrial companies and the energy transition. People in the picture, from left to right: Dr. Christian Thiel, CEO EnergyNEST - Jef VanEyck, CEO Campina Energie - Prof. Dr.-Ing. Robert Pitz-Paal, DLR - Koen Vermout, CEO AZTEQ - Jan Willekens, Technology Director EU, Avery Dennison. Picture: Avery Dennison.
Credit:
Avery Dennison
Standard processes should further reduce costs
The project is a collaboration of Avery Dennison with Azteq, an organisation that builds, develops and maintains CST facilities; ENERGYNEST, a long-duration thermal energy storage (TES) provider; and local community group Campina Energie, which helped secure a portion of the project financing. Partners of Azteq were the company Solarlite CSP Technology GmbH, that supplied the collectors for the solar field and AURA, responsible for the development of the balance of plant. The DLR Institute for Solar Research and AURA are working with further partners in the Modulus research project to standardise this interface.
The Modulus project participants DLR, AURA, the collector manufacturers Solarlite, Industrial Solar and Protarget as well as Fraunhofer ISE want to standardise the processes that control the integration of solar heat into the industrial process heat system so that they can be used modularly for different plants. Until now, each balance of plant has been individually planned and in some cases manufactured at the plant site. A standard station will significantly reduce overall costs and the risk of errors. In the Modulus project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection with €2.2 million, three different types of balance of plant will be developed and tested, one with thermal oil as the heat transfer medium on the user side, one with steam and a third with air.
On the right of the picture is the power transfer station with the connected thermal storage tank. It controls the transfer of heat from the solar field to the storage tank and the production process heating system. Image: Avery Dennison.
Credit:
Avery Dennison
The balance of plant at the Avery Dennison plant serves the project participants as a pilot operation of the type of plant that uses thermal oil as the heat transfer medium on the user side. Here they can record and evaluate the performance data from real operation and use the findings for the development of standardised processes.
Avery Dennison
Avery Dennison Corporation is a global leader in self-adhesive materials and technologies. The company is headquartered in Glendale, California, and employs more than 32,000 people in over 50 countries.
