World Steel Association
The city of Ouarzazate, known as the gateway to the Sahara Desert, is located in the Agadir district of southern Morocco. The annual amount of sunlight in this area is as high as 2635 kWh/m2, which has the largest annual amount of sunlight in the world.
A few kilometers north of the city, hundreds of thousands of mirrors gathered into a large disk, forming a solar power plant covering an area of ​​2500 hectares, named Noor (light in Arabic). The solar power plant’s power supply accounts for almost half of Morocco’s renewable energy power supply.
The solar power plant is composed of 3 different power stations in Noor Phase 1, Noor Phase II and Noor Phase 3. It can provide electricity to more than 1 million households and is expected to reduce 760,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. There are 537,000 parabolic mirrors in the first phase of Nuer Power Station. By focusing the sunlight, the mirrors heat the special heat transfer oil flowing through the stainless steel pipes of the whole plant. After the synthetic oil is heated to about 390 degrees Celsius, it will be transported to the center. Power plants, where steam is generated, which drives the main turbine to turn and generate electricity. With impressive scale and output, Nur Power Station is the third and the latest power plant to be connected to the grid in the world. The solar power plant has achieved a major technological leap, which indicates that the sustainable energy power generation industry has a bright development prospect.
steel has laid a solid foundation for the stable operation of the entire power plant, because the heat exchanger, steam generator, high-temperature pipes and molten salt storage tanks of the plant are all made of special-grade stainless steel.
Molten salt can store heat, enabling power plants to generate electricity at full capacity even in the dark. In order to achieve the goal of 24-hour full-load power generation, the power plant needs to inject a large amount of special salt (a mixture of potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate) into a large number of steel tanks. It is understood that the capacity of each steel tank of the solar power plant is 19,400 cubic meters. The molten salt in the steel tank is highly corrosive, so the steel tanks are made of professional-grade UR™347 stainless steel. This special grade steel has excellent corrosion resistance and is easy to form and weld, so it can be used flexibly.
Since the energy stored in each steel tank is enough to generate electricity continuously for 7 hours, the Nuer Complex can supply electricity all day long.
With the “sunbelt” countries located between 40 degrees south latitude and 40 degrees north latitude investing heavily in the photovoltaic power generation industry, the Nuer complex represents a bright future for this industry, and the dazzling giant steel structure escorts the Nuer complex to generate electricity. Green, all-weather transportation to all places.