Operational experience of hot air preheating at the PROTEAS facility

In this paper the operational experiences of hot air preheating of the molten salt transfer lines as implemented at the Platform for Research, Observation and TEchnological Applications in Solar energy (PROTEAS) in Cyprus are presented. The hot air preheating has been tested at the PROTEAS Facility over the last few years as a proof of concept against the Electrical Heat Tracing due to several operational difficulties observed during electrical preheating. The implementation of this concept has been initially demonstrated. Then based on the promising experimental results it was further explored and implemented as a hybrid concept operating with both electric heating and hot air preheating. The outcome of the experiments supports the proposed scheme of hybridization of pipe lines preheating. An optimization of the concept followed by the respective design and development follow and research towards that direction includes refinement of the technique and study of its economics.