Descripción del proyecto
Un nuevo ciclo energético coloca al CO2 y a la energía solar en el mismo equipo ganador
Las centrales eléctricas convierten la energía calorífica en electricidad. Las centrales convencionales que emplean combustibles fósiles generan calor a partir de la combustión y usan agua o vapor como fluidos de trabajo para convertir la energía calorífica en energía mecánica en una turbina que luego genera electricidad. La utilización de CO2 supercrítico como fluido de trabajo resulta cada vez más atractiva, pues permite una mayor eficiencia térmica a un menor coste. El proyecto financiado con fondos europeos SCARABEUS está desarrollando un nuevo concepto de ciclo energético basado en el uso de mezclas de CO2 supercrítico para concentrar centrales solares. Se espera que la tecnología reduzca de forma significativa los costes de inversión y explotación, y que esto resulte en reducciones atractivas del coste de la electricidad procedente de centrales solares.
Objetivo
"The main objective of the SCARABEUS project is the reduction of the CAPEX and OPEX in concentrated solar power technologies by about 32% and 40% respectively, leading to a final cost of Electricity below 96 €/MWh (lower than 30% of the actual value) through an innovative power cycle based on CO2 blends. This cost reduction will be able to close the gap between CSP and other renewable technologies. This project fits in the call ""New cycles and innovative power blocks for CSP plants."" as a brand new power cycle concept will be developed. With respect to state-of-the-art sCO2 cycles, the addition of small quantities of selected elements to pure CO2 (i.e. inorganic compounds and fluorocarbons), known as CO2 blending, can increase the CO2 critical point allowing the adoption of condensing cycle even in typical CSP plant locations. Condensing sCO2 cycles have higher thermal-to-electricity conversion efficiency with respect to conventional steam and sCO2 cycles.In addition, higher maximum operating temperature with respect to steam cycles can be adopted with further efficiency increase. The combination of these two aspects enables drastic reductions of the levelised cost of electricity In the project, CO2 blends stable at temperatures up to 700°C (which corresponds to 100°C above current CSP maximum temperatures) and with a pseudocritical temperature of about 50°C will be investigated. A preliminary screen was performed identifying some potential candidates (i.e. TiCl4). Assuming the simple cycle configuration, the TiCl4-blended CO2 outperforms the cycle using pure CO2 by 5% points at 700°C . When using the advanced sCO2 cycle, the efficiency gain is reduced to 2% points, but with significant cost savings. The proposed CO2 blend will be tested in a loop at 300 kWth scale with typical CSP fluids for 300 hours. Long term stability will be measured for 2000 hours and material compatibility assessed through dedicated experiments."
Ámbito científico
Not validated
Not validated
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Convocatoria de propuestas
Consulte otros proyectos de esta convocatoriaConvocatoria de subcontratación
H2020-LC-SC3-2018-RES-TwoStages
Régimen de financiación
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinador
20133 Milano
Italia