Materials Technologies for performance improvement of Cooling Systems in Power Plants

Objective

MATChING goal is the reduction of cooling water demand in the energy sector through innovative technological solutions, to be demonstrated in thermal and geothermal power plants. The project targets include an overall saving of water withdrawal of 30% in thermal power generation, and a decrease of evaporative losses up to 15% in geothermal sector. The use of advanced and nano-technology based materials will be leveraged to make economically affordable water saving in power plants and pave the way to the market uptake. All technological areas of plant cooling systems will be affected: cooling tower, steam condenser, cooling water circuit and water conditioning. The use of alternative cooling fluids will be investigated to develop advanced hybrid cooling towers for geothermal high temperature power plants, and hybrid cooled binary cycles for low temperature geothermal fields, combining dry/wet cooling, and closed loop groundwater cooling. To increase available effective water supply at reasonable costs, alternative water sources will be exploited: different membrane based technologies will be used to re-cycle or re-use municipal, process and blow down waters. To improve cooling equipment robustness advanced materials and coatings for cooling tower and condensers will be investigated, allowing increasing concentration cycles or directly using aggressive fluids. Demonstration will take place in partner-owned industrial sites, operating pilot plants in intended environment and/or in demo scale, guaranteeing the achievement of TRL 6 for all the technologies. The demonstration activities and the partnership composition ensures the validation of suitable business models and the finalization of business plans, guaranteeing the technological transfer from industry to market, increasing competitiveness at European level, and impacting on water use in power generation sector.

Field of science

/social sciences/economics and business/business and management/commerce
/engineering and technology/materials engineering/coating and films
/social sciences/economics and business/business and management/business model
/social sciences/economics and business

Funding Scheme

IA - Innovation action

Coordinators

ENEL INGEGNERIA E RICERCA SPA

Address

Via Mantova 24
00198 Rome
Italy

Activity type

Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)

EU contribution

€ 0

Objective

Field of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

Funding Scheme

Coordinators

Participants (17)

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