Saudi Aramco Awards Winning Project

Abstract Operational since 26th December 2020 on Saudi Aramco's premises in Qurayyah (KSA), TVP Solar thermal plant has been conceived as a sizeable industrial pilot for Saudi Aramco to show the potential of energy and CO2 savings offered by the solar thermal technology of the Swiss company TVP Solar. Because of its proven performances, Qurayyah's TVP thermal solar plant has been awarded in 2021 with the Environment Excellence Award assigned to the See Water Injection Department (SWID) within Saudi Aramco and with the Energy Efficiency Award assigned both to SWID and the Research and Development Center (R&DC). Qurayyah's TVP Solar plant has been engineered to preheat from 93 °C up to 174 °C the water fed to a set of two diesel fueled boilers used to generate steam. Experience gained in Qurayyah shows that at this location 1 MW of peak thermal power requires 1,700 m2 of TVP Solar collectors (for about 3,000 m2 of total occupation space) to produce 1.5 GWhT/year, thus reducing fuel consumption by 200 m3/year of diesel and avoiding 520 tons/year of CO2 emissions. The specific ability of TVP Solar collectors to harvest energy from diffuse light allowed the solar field to have its performance minimally impacted by fouling, even if the panels were never cleaned during more than one year of operations.