Abstract
This manuscript investigates the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power cycle employed in the power block of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants—solar tower—as an alternative for solar desalination, developed with either distillation or reverse osmosis. This concept is investigated as a possible up-scaling of the SOLMIDEFF project, originally based on a hot-air micro gas turbine combined with a solar dish collector. For the upscaled concept, five different sCO2 cycles are considered, chosen amongst the best-performing configurations proposed in the literature for CSP applications, and modelled with Thermoflex software. The influence of ambient conditions is studied, considering two minimum cycle temperatures (35 °C and 50 °C), corresponding to Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Abu Dhabi, respectively. The results show that the low temperatures at the inlet of the heat rejection unit compromise the viability of distillation technologies. On the other hand, the high thermal efficiency achieved by these cycles, especially with the recompression and partial cooling layouts, reduces the specific energy consumption when combined with reverse osmosis (RO), below that of photovoltaic (PV)+RO. Feed-water preheating is explored as a solution to further reduce energy consumption, concluding that its actual interest is not clear and strongly depends on the location considered and the corresponding water quality standards.
Highlights
The supercritical CO2 technology is currently living through times of flourishing interest in the scientific community
Examples are the Supercritical CO2 Power Cycles Symposium, the European sCO2 Conference for Energy Systems or the dedicated Technical Committee in the ASME Turbo Expo conference. All this interest is justified by the fact that sCO2 power cycles are able to achieve high thermal efficiency with simple and compact layouts, which translates into a lower footprint and higher operational flexibility than conventional power systems
A hybrid membrane inter-stage designs (HID) combining (2)440SR, (2)440GR and (3)440ES models is selected in order to approximate the boron quality to the threshold value of 1 ppm, as well as to reduce the flux in the first element below 1.04 m3 /h
Summary
The supercritical CO2 technology is currently living through times of flourishing interest in the scientific community. In order to upscale this concept to a size ranging from 50 to 100 MWe, the natural evolution would be to consider a different CSP technology, i.e., parabolic trough or solar tower, the second one being more adequate to enable higher temperatures at the turbine inlet, and having higher efficiencies In such a case, sCO2 power systems stem as one of the most promising solutions, given the higher efficiency of these cycles in comparison with conventional (steam) Rankine power cycles, which can bring about an important reduction in the land area occupied and, the capital expenditures (CAPEX) and levelised cost of electricity (LCoE) [11]. It is worth remarking that a CSP plant can be combined with thermal energy storage, thereby enabling the dispatchability of both power and water according to the needs of the end-user
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