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

New paper by University of Seville presents the exergy analysis of different transcritical Carbon Dioxide cycles for CSP applications

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The SCARABEUS team at University of Seville has recently published an assessment of transcritical cycles running on different Carbon Dioxide mixtures in Concentrated Solar Power applications. This assessment makes use of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, rather than the 1st Law that is commonly used, with the aim to identify the room for further performance enhancement. Three different dopants are considered: Hexafluorobenzene (for cycles operating at temperatures lower than 600ºC), Titanium Tetrachloride and Sulphur Dioxide.

The paper has been published in Renewable Energy (Elsevier) and it is available in Open Access on the publisher’s website (link). Check the abstract below:

This paper focuses on the thermodynamic comparison between pure supercritical Carbon Dioxide and blended transcritical Carbon Dioxide power cycles by means of a thorough exergy analysis, considering exergy efficiency, exergy destruction and efficiency losses from Carnot cycle as main figures of merit. A reference power plant based on a steam Rankine cycle and representative of the state-of-the-art (SoA) of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants is selected as base-case. Two different temperatures of the energy (heat) source are considered: 575 °C (SoA) and 725 °C (next generation CSP).

Compared to SoA Rankine cycles, CO2 blends enable cycle exergy efficiency gains up to 2.7 percentage points at 575 °C. At 725 °C, they outperform both SoA and pure CO2 cycles with exergy efficiencies up to 75.3%. This performance is brought by a significant reduction in the exergy destruction across the compression and heat rejection process rounding 50%. Additionally, it has been found that the internal condensation occurring inside the heat recuperator for those mixtures with a large temperature glide improves recuperator exergy efficiency, supporting the use of simpler layouts without split-compression. Finally, CO2 blends exhibit lower cycle exergy efficiency degradation than pure sCO2 in the event of an increase in the design ambient temperature.

A joint virtual dissemination event organized by CO2OLHEAT will be joined by SCARABEUS

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The CO2OLHEAT Project coordinated by ETN Global aims to demonstrate (at TRL7) the operation of a 2 MW Waste-Heat-to-power (WH2P) skid based on a 2MW-sCO2 cycle, able to efficiently valorize local waste heat at a significant temperature of 400°C in the CEMEX cement manufacturing plant in Prachovice (CZ).

 

CO2OLHEAT has organized a joint virtual dissemination event with a fabulous portfolio of ongoing national and international R&D projects focused on different aspects of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide technologies for power generation. SCARABEUS will be represented by Prof. David Sánchez, dissemination coordinator.

 

Do not miss this opportunity to be acquainted with the latest activities in this exciting topic, even more so given the current landscape of the energy sector and the associated need to push the development of new power generation technologies ensuring sustainability and security of supply.

 

The event will take place on September 22nd, 14.00 – 16.00 CEST. Follow this link to registration: https://lnkd.in/dTvVAKrD

 

 

 

SCARABEUS present at the ASME Turbo Expo conference in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

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The Turbo Expo conference gathers the leading professionals in power and propulsion technologies based on rotating equipment from around the world. The conference is organized by the International Gas Turbine Institute of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and is held annually in either Europe or North America, with an attendance of over 2000 delegates from industry, academia and government. This year, the conference was held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in June 13-17.

 

SCARABEUS was very well represented by the partners, presenting the latest progress made in each area of research:

 

  1. Illyes et al., Design of an Air-Cooled Condenser for CO2-Based Mixtures: Model Development, Validation and Heat Exchange Gain with Internal Microfins, Paper GT2022-82438 in Technical Session 33-05.
  2. Liao et al., Life Cycle Assessment of Innovative Concentrated Solar Power Plants Using Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Mixtures, Paper GT2022-83576 in Technical Session 33-08.
  3. Putelli et al., Preliminary Analysis of High-Temperature Corrosion of Metallic Alloys with CO2 and CO2-Based Working Mixtures for Power Plants Applications, Paper GT2022-84197 in Technical Session 33-08
  4. Abdeldayem et al., Integrated Aerodynamic and Structural Blade Shape Optimisation of Axial Turbines Operating With Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Blended with Dopants, Paper GT2022-81223 in Technical Session 33-08

 

In addition to this, the Dissemination Coordinator of SCARABEUS (Prof. D. Sánchez) organizer a panel session on Large R&D Project Development in Europe, along with Renaud Le Pierres (Heatric).

The technical papers will be published in Open-Access in the conference proceedings. For the panel discussion, you can contact Prof. Sánchez to get a summary presentation (ds@us.es)

Presentations from the panel session on Role of CSP in the future energy landscape now available for download

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If you enjoyed the panel session on the Role of CSP in the future energy landscape organized by the SCARABEUS project at University of Seville on April 20th, or if you missed this excellent opportunity to get acquainted with the views from the industry, government and scientific community, you can now download the presentations from the links below.

 

Decarbonising industry through science for policy

Dr. Sonia Fereres.

Scientific Project Officer JRC B5 (Circular Economy and Industrial Leadership), European Commission.

Challenges of CSP Technology in the Energy Transition   

Dr. Ana Bernardos.

Head of Photo-thermal Innovation and Technological Development Unit. Solar Energy Technologies and Storage Department. CENER.

CSP definition, services and future.

Dr. Gonzalo Martín Barrera

Secretary General of Protermosolar

 

 

 

Joint Dissemination event by CSP-related H2020 projects organized at University of Seville

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Taking advantage of the progress meeting being held in Seville, hosted by University of Seville and Abengoa, the SCARABEUS consortium organized a joint dissemination event along with other two projects funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission was organized, with the agenda below.

 

H2020 Networking Session SCARABEUS (Sala de Juntas) @ USE
Time slot What
April 20th 09:45 10:00 Welcome

Prof. David Sánchez, University of Seville
10:00 10:45 SOCRATCES, SCARABEUS & SOLARSCO2OL: key enabling technologies for fully dispatchable solar electricity (Chair: Dr. Noelia Martínez)

SOCRATCES – Enabling Large-Scale Solar Energy Storage

Prof. Ricardo Chacartegui (Project Coordinator)

Dep. Energy Engineering, University of Seville

SCARABEUS – Breaking the Temperature Chain to Enable Cost-Effective Solar Thermal Electricity

Prof. Giampaolo Manzolini (Project Coordinator)

Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano

SOLARSCO2OL – Solar based sCO2 Operating Low-cost Plants.

Mr. Antón Lopez

Solar Innovation Department, Abengoa Energía
10:45 11:15 Coffee break
11:15 12:45 Role of CSP in the future energy landscape (Chair: Prof. David Sánchez)

Decarbonising industry through science for policy

Dr. Sonia Fereres. Scientific Project Officer JRC B5 (Circular Economy and Industrial Leadership), European Commission.

Challenges of CSP Technology in the Energy Transition   

Dr. Ana Bernardos. Head of Photo-thermal Innovation and Technological Development Unit. Solar Energy Technologies and Storage Department. CENER.

CSP definition, services and future.

Dr. Gonzalo Martín Barrera

Secretary General of Protermosolar.

 

SOCRATCES (SOlar Calcium-looping integRAtion for Thermo-Chemical Energy Storage) is a research and innovation action with a total budget of 5 M€ aimed at aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of integrating Calcium Looping into CSP by erecting a pilot-scale plant that uses cheap, abundant, and non-toxic materials as well as mature solar and fluidized bed reactor technologies for energy storage. SOLARSCO2OL (SOLAR based sCO2 Operating Low-cost plants) is also an innovation action with a total budget of 13.4 M€ (10 M€ contribution by the EC) aimed at demonstrating the first MW Scale EU sCO2 power block operating in a real CSP plant.

 

A first technical session was held in the first part of the morning, where the project coordinators of SOCRATCES (Prof. Ricardo Chacartegui, University of Seville) and SCARABEUS (Prof. Giampaolo Manzolini, Politecnico di Milano) and a representative of the SOLARSCO2OL consortium (Mr. Antón López, Abengoa) shared the main characteristics, challenges and outcomes of the project, along with the foreseen future impacts on technology and society. The panel was chaired by Dr. Noelia Martínez (Abengoa), Exploitation Manager of SCARABEUS.

Panel session on key enabling technologies for fully dispatchable solar electricity.

 

After a networking coffee-break, the second session took place. This was a high-level panel session with delegates representing the industry (Dr. Gonzalo Martín-Barrera, PROTERMOSOLAR), scientific community (Dr. Ana Bernardos, CENER) and government (Dr. Sonia Fereres, European Commission), chaired by Prof. David Sánchez (University of Seville), Dissemination Coordinator of SCARABEUS. The talks were very complementary to one another and presented an excellent overview of how joint collaboration by institutions and companies in all three sectors is needed to effectively accomplish the very large challenges ahead. The interaction with the audience was very lively and raised lots of questions that are now more pressing than ever. The discussion also expanded into how to effectively tackle aspects such as security of supply and sustainability of future energy sources in the new sociopolitical scenario, and the role to be played by CSP.

Panel session on the role of CSP in the future energy landscape.

 

From the SCARABEUS, thanks you very much for supporting and joining this event.

 

N.B.: The presentations by the speakers will be made available on our website soon,

Progress meeting held in Seville, hosted by University of Seville and Abengoa

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The last progress meeting of the SCARABEUS project was held in Seville on the 21st and 22nd of April. It was a two-day meeting hosted by University of Seville, on the first day, and Abengoa, on the second.

 

 

Group picture at the School of Engineering, University of Seville (standing from left: P. Iora, P. Rodríguez de Arriba, G. di Marcoberardino, A. López, V. Ilyes, E. Morosini, X. Guerif, P. David, F. Crespi, A. Sayma, M. Ruggiero, D. Sánchez, M. Fiori. Front: G. Manzolini, N. Martínez)

 

Sixteen delegates from the nine partners joined physically whereas other five joined remotely since they could not travel for different reasons. In the morning of the first day, a joint dissemination event along with other two projects funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission was organized, with the agenda below.

 

H2020 Networking Session SCARABEUS (Sala de Juntas) @ USE
Time slot What
April 20th 09:45 10:00 Welcome

Prof. David Sánchez, University of Seville
10:00 10:45 SOCRATCES, SCARABEUS & SOLARSCO2OL: key enabling technologies for fully dispatchable solar electricity (Chair: Dr. Noelia Martínez)

SOCRATCES – Enabling Large-Scale Solar Energy Storage

Prof. Ricardo Chacartegui (Project Coordinator)

Dep. Energy Engineering, University of Seville

SCARABEUS – Breaking the Temperature Chain to Enable Cost-Effective Solar Thermal Electricity

Prof. Giampaolo Manzolini (Project Coordinator)

Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano

SOLARSCO2OL – Solar based sCO2 Operating Low-cost Plants.

Mr. Antón Lopez

Solar Innovation Department, Abengoa Energía
10:45 11:15 Coffee break
11:15 12:45 Role of CSP in the future energy landscape (Chair: Prof. David Sánchez)

Decarbonising industry through science for policy

Dr. Sonia Fereres. Scientific Project Officer JRC B5 (Circular Economy and Industrial Leadership), European Commission.

Challenges of CSP Technology in the Energy Transition   

Dr. Ana Bernardos. Head of Photo-thermal Innovation and Technological Development Unit. Solar Energy Technologies and Storage Department. CENER.

CSP definition, services and future.

Dr. Gonzalo Martín Barrera

Secretary General of Protermosolar.

 

A first technical session was held in the first part of the morning, later followed by a high-level panel session with delegates representing the industry, scientific community and government. Overall, some fifty attendees participated to this activity which gave way to lively discussions and very effective networking.

 

 

Joint dissemination event with projects funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the EC.

 

In the afternoon of the first day, the meeting continued at University of Seville for the partners of SCARABEUS who had the opportunity to discuss face-to-face for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. On the second day, the meeting moved to the premises of Abengoa. Upon conclusion of the meeting, the partners agreed on the good progress made by all work packages, despite the inevitable impact of the shortage and higher prices of certain critical materials on the schedule of experimental activities. This is nevertheless not to be concerned about as the first set of equipment for testing has already been delivered to Technical Universty of Viena.

 

 

Group picture at Abengoa’s headquarter in Palmas Altas, Seville (from left: P. Rogríguez de Arriba, V. Ilyes, G. di Marcoberardino, A. Werner, S. Salah, A. Sayma, G. Manzolini, A. López, P. David, M. Fiori, E. Morosini, F. Crespi, D. Sánchez, X. Guerif, M. Ruggiero, P. Iora, N. Martínez)