[Lewis Allsopp]
Hello and welcome. This is For a Better Tomorrow, the University of Derby’s Innovation and Research Podcast - with me Lewis Allsopp. Every episode I chat to someone in academia about what they’re working on and how it will make our lives better. Now in previous episodes we have spoken to researchers answering questions like: why research is important to the University of Derby? and how can analysis of events from the past inform our current decision making? But today I want to talk energy. Climate change is a big topic in society at the moment and switching to a zero carbon way of living is one of the ways that can help our planet. But what does that really mean? Today I want to talk about mirrors and the sun with Dr Mounia Karim, who is a Senior Researcher in Solar Energy and Zero Carbon at the University of Derby. Thank you so much for popping over and coming to chat with me. Before we get into that just tell me a bit about you, first of all.
[Dr Mounia Karim]
I am originally from Morocco, and I am a daddy’s girl. So, I got my PHD in Morocco back in 2015. I did my PHD in Solar Energy and I worked for three years in Morocco before joining here in 2018. I joined the UK. I joined first at Cranfield University for 4 years. Recently in July 2022 I joined the University of Derby and here I am.
[Lewis Allsopp]
Lovely. Talk to me a little bit about your research?
[Dr Mounia Karim]
Yeah
[Lewis Allsopp]
And what sort of area you work in? Cause it’s an interesting one.
[Dr Mounia Karim]
It is it is, really. So, my expertise is all about solar energy and I am basically looking at the concentrated solar power plants. So, there is two main ways of extracting or using the solar energy. So, it’s either by photovoltaics like the panels that we…
[Lewis Allsopp]
These are the panels you see on the roofs?
[Dr Mounia Karim]
Exactly, yeah and there is another way of doing which is the concentrated solar power plants. Where working, which is my field expertise, basically.
So, this, the concentrated solar panel plants is a bit different, because we are, instead of transforming the solar energy directly into electricity. We are first transforming it into thermal energy then storing it and then we can convert it later on into electricity.
[Lewis Allsopp]
When you say concentrated, what does that mean? Is this one of those things you see online where there is lots of mirrors?
[Dr Mounia Karim]
Exactly, so basically it’s big mirrors. It’s huge mirrors. Sometimes it’s like 12 meter/diameter or something like that or even more for some other technologies. And then the idea is that we concentrate the solar rays that are coming from the solar basically into a pipeline or a tube or something that is in there that could be a tube-like linear tube or that could be a focus point somewhere for the tower technology. And then the idea is to raise the temperature of the fluid the that is inside the tube, and we can reach something around 400-600 degrees Celsius, depending on the technology, once again. And this thermal energy can be stored as it is, as a thermal, or can be transformed into electricity as I said and can be just injected into the grid.
[Lewis Allsopp]
We have spoken about that there are two different types of solar energy. Why is, obviously this is different, but what makes it…is it better...if so, what makes it better?
[Dr Mounia Karim]
Yeah, so good question, actually. There is, it’s not better but it’s, I would say its more. That in everyone there is pros and cons, so for example for the photovoltaics it’s a cheap technology. The Kilowatt is cheaper but then the problem with the photovoltaics is the storage because we are just producing electric energy, which can only be stored into batteries. And you know how much the batteries, how expensive they are. However, for the concentrated solar power plants, the advantage of it is that we are generating first instance thermal energy that can be stored as it is, as a thermal energy instead of [Inaudible] electricity while storing it into thermal. Which is much lower in costs. So, if we are talking about costs of the generated kilowatt electric, we are talking about 10x difference in prices. So, if we are storing one Kilowatt electric in a battery it is 10x more expensive than if you are storing it into a way of thermal as a thermal energy.
[Lewis Allsopp]
So, there’s a concentrated way of doing it? It’s obviously much cheaper but to be fair it does require a lot of space, doesn’t it? For it to work effectively.
[Dr Mounia Karim]
It is, yeah, that is correct. Also, the technology itself. We are like, for example, I am working in a big team, and we are working into research to make it more feasible like to increase the efficiency of the technology. To make it more competitive with PV. As I said PV is now the leader in the market but we are working on CSP and we are addressing some problems that are still present in this CSP. That means concentrated solar panel, sorry.
So, we are trying it in our research activities to try and approach different problems and problematics that are in the CSP field in order to increase efficiency and then increase durability of the components.
So, for example, I did my PHD in Morocco on the evaluation of the lifetime of solar components used in the solar field. So, I was looking into the degradation of the solar mirrors by time, over time, and I was trying to find the way of expecting how long they would work for. Because concentrated power plant is meant to stay for 20- 25 years old. So, we need to make sure that our competence will stay as long as plants stay for. You know, to make it more cost effective. So I did my project on that, my PHD was on that. And then I was trying to figure out the impact of the environmental conditions on this degradation cause as you know, for example, if we take site in Arizona or a site here in Bristol or Derby and another site in Morocco. So our samples are our mirrors will behave in a very different way, depending on the location because they are exposing them to the outdoor conditions, isn’t it So, they will behave differently.
[Lewis Allsopp]
There’s plenty of rain on the British one’s, I think.
[Dr Mounia Karim]
Yeah yeah, actually. The, the rain, there is the wind speed and direction. There is the humidity. There is so many factors that are affecting our degradation rate and it’s really important to predict this life-time of our components so that we know how much we would be investing in the maintenance costs.
[Lewis Allsopp]
I was going to ask you about that actually because when you think about these concentrated ones. I mean I’ve seen them on the telly and they’re always in like big desserts and I always assumed that was the only place that they would work but could they work, realistically, could they work in Britain? If, you know, like you say the technology was there to ensure that the mirrors and everything else would sustain the pressure of the weather.
[Dr Mounia Karim]
I am surprised with this question because you are, you know, you are not in the topic and you are asking a very good and interesting questions. Thanks for that.
So actually, the first criteria that we are taking into consideration to choose a side is the, something we called, direct normal inaudience which is how much solar rays we are getting out of the sun and this dmi, which is direct normal inaudience and needs to have a certain limit like the threshold value. Which is around 200 kilowatts. So to make sure that we have a good [inaudible] in the site. So, this is the first criteria.
Then we have plenty of others to choose aside. We need to have a flat side, we need to have a huge place, as you said. We need to have a place which is far away from the communities and things to make sure it is going to work and that we are avoiding all the problems that go with that. So, there is plenty of criteria but Britain we don’t have enough solar, like, direct normal inaudience in many of our sites around Britain. But we, started recently an idea of digging deep into this point and trying to see how good it would be to have a hybrid site, for example, with CSP technology in Britain because we can still have something out of it. To be honest. So, it’s yeah, I think for a long time of being just having a PV in Britain. It’s maybe time to think about hybrid door or maybe small CSP and installations to reach our net zero goal.
[Lewis Allsopp]
Yeah, like you say, net zero is dead important and I know the government keep putting in targets and worldwide we have targets, but you know forgetting all the political side of it. Realistically, it’s about helping society make our energy better. It’s dead interesting, what’s your goal? What would you like to see in an ideal world? What would you like to see from your research? What would you like to see come of it?
[Dr Mounia Karim]
I work now for the University of Derby. I work for the zero-carbon team, academic team. So we are a big team working on different topics to deal with net zero. My team we are looking into the solar energy of it. So we are trying to put some proposals where we are working on research activities more than short term [inaudible]. So, we are on long term projects. So, our projects may vary between 18 months, 1 year up to 4 years of projects that we are working on.
So, our team is really looking into the technology. So, we are trying to cover this technology in different, as I said, in different aspects and the main objective is really to increase the use of this technology and to prove that it is working, and it is going to work and have some benefit out of it.
So, in addition to material durability that I have been talking about earlier, we are, also, working in on the developing some solutions, if I may say, to reduce the water consumption in concentrated solar power because as you said they are mostly in arid areas. So, we need some solutions to reduce the water that we need for cleaning the mirror, the solar field. So, we have been developing in the team, in one of the projects we have been developing a solution to reduce this solar in the position and then reducing how frequent we need to clean. We are also, looking at the social economic and environmental aspects of the technology. We are trying to approach it in terms of the life cycle analysis of the technology itself. We have been doing some research on how to assess the environmental and social economic impacts that would have of these kinds of plants on the surrounding communities because, as you know, every single project will have an impact on the locals.
So, we were trying to see how our project, if we are having any CSP implementation how it will affect or it will impact in a positive or negative way the local communities. Also, in the team we are addressing the thermal energy storage and the heat recovery as well. So, we are like I am trying to say here that we are take the topic of net zero and the topic of solar energy in very different aspects and we are trying to come together in a way to make the, lift the print in it and help achieving the net zero road map that Britain has been putting in and everyone now is going towards this one.
[Lewis Allsopp]
Yeah, yeah they are. Like you say, I mean, it’s hard to understand the amount of strands of work that is going on but all coming together to see that goal. Listen, it has been dead interesting to talk with you and thank you very much for coming to chat to me.
[Dr Mounia Karim]
Thank you very much. My pleasure and yeah, I am really happy to be here today and to share with you what we are doing because sometimes you are just very much into it so that you just think, ‘oh what am I doing you know? But when you are talking to someone, like, outside you just realise that you are making progress.
[Lewis Allsopp]
Oh absolutely.
[Dr Mounia Karim]
So, I am really happy to be here and thank you very much.
[Lewis Allsopp]
That is Doctor Mounia Karim, who is a Senior Researcher in Solar Energy in Zero Carbon at the University of Derby and well that is it. For other episodes of For a Better Tomorrow, The University of Derby’s Innovation and Research Podcasts. In other episodes I have been looking at research answering questions such as what proteins can help combat the onset of Alzheimer’s? and why singing is good for us. So be sure to check them out wherever you get your podcasts right now and follow the university too @DerbyUni. I will see you next time. Bye Bye.
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