New joint paper by Quantis, University of Seville, Abengoa, Baker-Hughes and Kelvion discusses the carbon footprint of the SCARABEUS concept

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A large team from within the SCARABEUS consortium has been assessing the carbon footprint of Concentrated Solar Power plants using supercritical power cycles running on Carbon Dioxide mixtures, in comparison with state of the art power plants relying on steam turbines. This collective work has looked into the contributions of construction and operation to carbon footprint, with a special focus on the singularities introduced by the utilization of an innovative working fluid.

The work was presented at the ASME conference held in Rotterdam (The Netherlands), June 13-17, at a very well attended session where an interesting discussion followed the presentation by Dr. Francesco Crespi, from University of Seville. Life Cycle Environmental Assessment is an ongoing task in SCARABEUS and further results will be published in the coming minths.

The paper is available in Open Access on the publisher’s website (link). Check the abstract below:

The SCARABEUS project, funded by the European Commission, is currently investigating the potential gains brought about by the utilization of carbon dioxide mixtures in supercritical power cycles of Concentrated Solar Power plants, in lieu of the common Rankine cycles based on steam turbines or even pure carbon dioxide cycles. The analysis has already confirmed that it is possible to attain thermal efficiencies higher than 51% when ambient temperatures exceed 40°C, which is unheard of when conventional technology or standard CO2 technology is used. Additionally, this extraordinary performance is achieved with simpler cycle layouts, therefore with lower capital costs. The additives considered include organic and inorganic compounds which are added to the raw carbon dioxide in a variable proportion, depending on the composition of the additive and on ambient temperature. Regardless, it is important to assess whether or not there is an additional environmental advantage in terms of carbon dioxide and other potential hazards brought about by the new chemicals in the system. This is presented in this paper where the results obtained so far by the consortium for the carbon footprint from a Life Cycle perspective are discussed. Along with the assumptions and methodology, the results are compared for three reference plants: state-of-the-art CSP plant based on steam turbines, innovative CSP plant using pure supercritical CO2 technology, and the SCARABEUS concept using supercritical CO2 mixtures. The results are promising as they suggest that it is possible to reduce the carbon footprint of a 110 MWe CSP plant to be significantly less than 27kgCO2/MWh from the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5)

Laboratorio Energia e Ambiente Piacenza working on the socio-economic assessment of the technology

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Laboratorio Energia e Ambiente Piacenza working on the socio-economic assessment of the technology

 

 

The team led by Marco Gabba at the Laboratorio Energia e Ambiente Piacenza is working on Task 5.5 of the project, focused on natural capital valuation and socio-economic assessment. To this end, Gabba’s team has set up a survey, with the objective to evaluate the advantages, costs and risks of a concentrating solar plant using a CO2-based mixture as working fluid starting from the assessments of experts / technicians in the sector, through a series of structured questions with quantitative parameters.

 

This is an excellent opportunity for anyone interested in contributing to and influencing the development of new generation Concentrated Solar Plants. Answering the survey takes less than ten minutes and the data collected are strictly technical, not including any personal information.

If you would like to provide your input, follow this link: https://lnkd.in/e5Z_gdxV

 

Thank you very much for your input!!!

Presentations from the joint dissemination event organized by ETN Global now available

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The joint dissemination event organized by the CO2OLHEAT Project, coordinated by ETN Global, on September 22nd was an ABSOLUTE SUCCESS. You can now download all presentations from the links below:

  • E. Lecomte, Directorate General for Energy (European Commission): EU Energy Policy Developments. Download.
  • A. Jäger, Technical University of Dresden: CARBOSOLA. Download.
  • D. Benítez, German Aerospace Center (DLR): Components’ and Materials’ Performance for Advanced Solar Supercritical CO2 Powerplants – COMPASsCO2. Download.
  • D. Sánchez, University of Seville: Supercritical CARbon dioxide/Alternative fluids Blends for Efficiency Upgrade of Solar power plants – SCARABEUS. Download.
  • G. Manzolini, Politecnico di Milano: DEmonstration of concentrated SOLar power coupled wIth advaNced desAlinaTion system in the gulf regION – DESOLINATION. Download.
  • R. Guedez, Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm (KTH): SOLAR based sCO2 Operating Low-cost plants – SOLARSCO2OL. Download.
  • R. Vijgen, European Turbine Network: Supercritical CO2 power cycles demonstration in Operational environment Locally valorising industrial Waste Heat – CO2OLHEAT. Download.
  • O. Frybort, Research Center Rez, Husinec (CVR): Development of innovative systems for efficient energy storage – sCO2-Efekt. Download.
  • A. Cagnac, Electricity of France (EDF): Innovative sCO2-based heat removal technology for an increased level of safety of nuclear power plants. Download.

 

Thank you again CO2OLHEAT for this excellent initiative. Looking forward to the next session

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SCARABEUS present at the Solar Helix meeting in Madrid

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The Dissemination Coordinator of SCARABEUS, Prof. David Sánchez from University of Seville, has been invited to join a clustering session organized by the ASTEP project: Application of Solar Thermal Energy to Processes . ASTEP is funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission, under Grant Agreement Ni. 884411, and its main objective is to successfully demonstrate the viability of applying solar thermal energy to partially cover heating, and heating and cooling demands on two different relevant industrial demo sites located on two different climate regions, and to further develop the implementation of solar thermal energy in industrial processes up to 400 ºC. More information about this project, coordinated by Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia – UNED (Spain), is available on their website: https://astepproject.eu/

 

With the aim to explore opportunities for joint dissemination and exploitation in the future, the clustering activity held on October 20th is an excellent opportunity to get acquainted with the portfolio of collaborative projects investigating how solar energy can be integrated into thermal process for the industry and to generate electric power.

 

Agenda of the meeting. Clustering activity scheduled at 15.00 – 16.30