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

Abstract

© 2019 The Authors. 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 °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 (sCO2) as working fluid. The packaged, plug and play sCO2 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.