Design of a high-temperature heat to power conversion facility for testing supercritical CO2 equipment and packaged power units

Giuseppe Bianchi;Samira S. Saravi;Romain Loeb;Konstantinos M. Tsamos;Matteo Marchionni

;Arthur Leroux;Savvas A. Tassou

2019-01-01

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Abstract

This paper addresses the need of bridging between fundamental energy research and industrial exploitation of technologies by presenting a state of the art experimental facility to investigate pilot heat exchangers and plants dealing with high temperature waste heat recovery and conversion. The facility comprises a 830 kW process air heater with an exhaust mass flow rate of 1.0 kg/s at 70 mbarg and maximum temperature of 780 degrees C. The heater has a 2.0 m long test section for the installation and characterization of waste heat recovery heat exchangers. The heat sink is a 500 kW water dry cooler with full control of flow rate and temperature of the cooling stream. The high-temperature heat to power conversion facility hosts a 50 kWe power conversion unit based on the simple recuperated Joule-Brayton cycle with supercritical CO2 (sCO(2)) as working fluid. The packaged, plug and play sCO(2) system utilizes a single-shaft Compressor-Generator-Turbine unit. The paper discusses the main design features of the test facility as well as operation and safety considerations.