Project description
Elevating the operating and storage temperature and increasing the efficiency of CSP
Concentrated solar power (CSP) technology will be an important piece of the green energy puzzle. Earlier concepts employ a liquid heat transfer medium, molten salt is the current state-of-the-art, and particle suspensions have been advocated for more than three decades. These could increase CSP plant operating temperatures and thus drive high-efficiency power cycles. The EU-funded POWDER2POWER project plans to demonstrate just such a concept at megawatt scale including conveying particles between the tower top and the ground. POWDER2POWER is optimising a CSP concept developed in the Next-CSP H2020 project and adding an electricity-driven particle superheated thermal energy storage. The latter will support a high-temperature photovoltaic-CSP concept capable of driving efficient and cost-effective supercritical CO2 power cycles.
Objective
The Powder2Power project aims to demonstrate at the MW-scale (TRL7) the operation of an innovative, cost effective and more reliable complete fluidized particle-driven Concentrated Solar Technology that can be applied for both power and industrial heat production. The prototype to be developed and tested is based on the modification and the improvement of an experimental loop built in the framework of the previous H2020 project Next-CSP. It will include all the components of a commercial plant, a multi-tube fluidized bed solar receiver (2 MWth), an electricity-driven particle superheater (300 kW), a hot store, a particle-to-working fluid cross-flow fluidized bed heat exchanger (2 MWth), a turbine (hybrid Brayton cycle gas turbine, 1.2 MWe), a cold store and a vertical particle transport system (~100 m). It is planned to organize the experimental campaign at the Themis tower (France) during one year. Adding an electricity-driven particle superheater will enable to validate a PV-CSP concept working at 750°C that is expected to result in electricity cost reduction with respect to the state-of-the-art. At utility-scale, this temperature allows to adopt high efficiency conversion cycles, typically 750°C for supercritical CO2 (sCO2) cycles. The expected increase in conversion efficiency (sun to power) of the P2P solution with respect to molten salt technology is in the range 5 to 9% and the cost reduction is 5.4%. (LCOE). The hybrid CSP-PV concept enables to reach 9% in efficiency increase and the CSP-only concept 5%. The proposed approach includes the sustainability assessment in environmental and socio-economic terms. A special attention will be brought to elaborate in a transparent way all documents necessary to ensure replicability, up-scaling and to assist future planning decisions. Ten participants from 6 EU countries constitute the P2P consortium. Six participants are industrial and service companies, and four are public research institutions and universities.
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation ActionsCoordinator
75794 Paris
France