MATS Concentrating Solar Power plant in SRTA-City (Egypt)

MATS experimental plant in Borg El Arab allows individual testing of innovative components and their connection on a relevant (pre-commercial) scale. Developed engineering packages, methodologies and tools will support the design of optimized plants specifically tailored to meet end-user’s needs and specifications.
The MATS demo plant includes 18 solar collectors, each 100 m long, with a total reflective panel area of 10,000 m2. During normal operation, molten salts enter the solar field at 290°C, collect the solar energy and are heated up to 550°C. In the event of a lack of solar radiation, the natural gas back-up unit heats the salts to 550°C. Molten salts are collected in a heat storage tank integrated with a steam generator. Produced steam (460°C, 55 bar) feeds a co-generative cycle to produce 1 MWe power with 250 m3/day of desalinated water from the desalination (MED) unit.
The plant is well integrated in the local energy and water cycles: it is connected with local gas and electrical utility grids; furthermore, the plant is also linked with local water cycle as raw water extracted from wells is purified and high quality water produced for different local market uses.