Case Study: ENEL achieves reliable 24/7 molten‑salt solar power by optimizing drainage with COMSOL Multiphysics

Enel - Customer Case Study

Enel’s Archimede demonstration plant in Sicily is the world’s first parabolic trough CSP plant to use molten salt for both heat transfer and storage, but the team faced a critical engineering challenge: keeping the salt above its melting point in a long drainage circuit to avoid blockages and a costly shutdown. To address this, Enel engaged Comsol and used COMSOL Multiphysics to analyze temperature, heat loss, and thermal stresses during start-up and operation.

Comsol built 3D conjugate heat-transfer simulations (stationary and transient) with temperature-dependent material properties, optimized the conic drain geometry and insulation, and sized the electrical trace heating cables; results were validated with IR thermography and thermocouples. The COMSOL Multiphysics models ensured the circuit could be kept above the salt’s freeze point (operational target ~290 °C, pipes rated to ~300 °C), reduced the risk of the drain becoming a single point of failure (avoiding at least a two‑day branch outage), supported preventive maintenance planning, and justified the project investment while enabling scalable design improvements.

Enel

Daniele Consoli

Project Engineer in the Engineering and Innovation Division