Energy and Industrial Process Systems Engineering

The goal of this project is to facilitate stakeholders in characterizing the technical performance and in evaluating the economic feasibility of any energy storage technology based energy system, such as for heating/cooling, renewable energy and energy efficiency increase.

DETECTIVE aims at enhancing the efficiency of Parabolic Trough Collectors (PTCs) acting on their current optical behavior with an innovative approach, introducing a novel tubular receiver to increase solar absorption as well as reduce the reflection and radiation losses, by promoting tube-bundle and cavity concepts. Such improvement would ensure a cascade effect enabling lower costs and reduce area footprint for linear concentrated solar power (CSP) and thermal (CST) plants, and leading to reduced capital investment and impact, facilitating the installation also in industrial sites.

The main goal of the FLEXnCONFU project is to develop and demonstrate innovative, economically viable and replicable power-to-X-to-power (P2X2P) solutions in combined cycle (CC) power plants. The objective is to design and implement integrated power plant layouts that can increase the operational flexibility in order to respond to the electricity demand.

FLUWS aims to develop and validate a more flexible, reliable, environmentally friendly and cost-effective thermal energy storage (TES) system futureproofed for next generation concentrating solar power (CSP) plants operating at higher temperatures and hybridized with PV, which are recognized as the two main paths for reaching cost-efficiency of CSP in the near future. Specifically, FLUWS validates up to TRL 5 a novel TES concept that ensures elevated thermal efficiency with minimum environmental impact thanks to on the one hand the upcycling of waste and residual materials from the ceramic industry and the use of air as heat transfer fluid, and on the other thanks to building on previous consortium know-how in the development of new cost-effective radial packed-bed TES and materials for high temperature applications. The new FLUWS TES will enable more flexible and modular CSP systems as it will have embedded electric heaters driven by renewable electricity and will be designed for easier integration with compact gas Brayton cycles (i.e. supercritical CO2 and air-driven), thus facilitating the provision of additional services from CSP to the grid and widening the applications of CSP as a competitive technology for combined heat and power in the industrial sector.

Wind power is one of the most promising pathways for a future fossil-free society due to its abundant resources and continuously decreasing costs. From 2013 to 2022, the global total installed capacity has grown 3 times from 300 GW to 900 GW. In Sweden, wind power has become the third largest electricity source since 2013, and its installed capacity has reached 12.1 GW by 2021. However, wind turbines themselves present another environmental issue when their useful life is over, since they will become a form of hazardous waste that cannot be decomposed naturally. Especially the wind blades, they are mostly made of glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP) and can be longer than 60 m. On a global scale, it was expected that the total annual amount of end-of-life (EOL) wind blade can reach 683 ktons in 2025. In Sweden, the cumulative number of installed wind turbine has reached 813 by 2005. Based on the 20 years’ average life time for wind turbines, there will be more than 2400 pieces of wind blades need to be disposed by 2025. With the rapid growth of wind turbine installation after 2005, EOL wind blade will increase dramatically in the near future in Sweden, which is challenging the Swedish wind energy companies and recycling companies.

HYBRIDplus aims to pioneer the next generation of CSP with an advanced high-density and high-temperature thermal energy storage (TES) system capable of providing a high degree of dispatchability at a low cost and with a much lower environmental burden than the State of the Art. This thermal storage is based on the Phase Change Material (PCM) technology in a cascade configuration that can reproduce the effect of a thermocline and integrates recycled metal wool in its nucleus. This enables hybridization with PV by acting as an electric heater transforming non-dispatchable renewable electricity into thermal stored energy ready to be dispatched when needed. HYBRIDplus proposes a novel concept to hybridize PV+Cascade PCM-TES with CSP configuration based on a high-temperature supercritical CO2 cycle working at 600 ºC. This new plant is called to form the backbone of the next-generation energy system thanks to higher efficiency and lower LCOE than state-of-the-art technology.

I-UPS aims to develop and validate a first-of-a-kind (FOAK), cost-effective and reliable high-temperature industrial heat pump fully integrated in a flexible energy system for industrial medium temperature (~400°C) heat decarbonisation.
I-UPS validate up to TRL 5 a FOAK high-temperature heat pump, based on Stirling cycles and exploiting a non-toxic, inert, zero ozone depletion potential and zero global warming potential fluid, able to deliver decarbonized heat up to 400°C. No other commercial alternatives are available achieving this heat delivery temperature at efficiencies higher than 100%. The developed heat pump provides enhanced performance thanks to the optimization of key subcomponents, such as optimized static and dynamic sealing solutions and compact heat exchangers enabled by genetic algorithm based design optimization and additive manufacturing techniques. I-UPS provides also a seamless integration of the developed high temperature heat pump in flexible energy systems including molten salts based thermal energy storage (TES) for on-demand decarbonized industrial heat based on RES electricity. The integrated heat pump configuration will enable higher modularity, flexibility, and efficiency for heating decarbonisation also leveraging waste heat recovery and contributing to the circularity of the industrial sector.

P2P 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 crossflow 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). The addition of an electricity-driven particle superheater will enable to validate a hybridized PV-CSP system working at 750°C that is expected to result in electricity cost reduction and efficiency improvement with respect to state-of-the-art.

The aim of this project is to design, assess and develop an innovative technical cost-effective solutions for integrated power-to-heat and thermal energy storage systems to satisfy the heat demand of the hard to abate industrial sector. The final goal of the project is to provide design recommendations for Kyoto Group’s next generation thermal energy storage and power-to-heat solution.

SCO2OP-TES project aims to develop and validate up to TRL5, in UNIGE lab hosted in Tirreno Power (TP) Vado Ligure Combined Cycle power plant (CCGT), the next generation of Power-to-Heat-to-Power (P2H2P) energy storage solutions. SCO2OP-TES solution is able to guarantee affordable long duration (>10hrs) and large scale energy storage (multi MW/MWh) to facilitate bulky RES integration in EU energy systems as well as to facilitate large scale integration of RES and to convert traditional power plants (CCGT, CHP) – both standalone and those in industrial parks - into flexible renewable energy plants. This will be crucial particularly in a future scenario where their role will be more and more different and industrial process will be more and more electrified.

SHARP-sCO2 addresses key technological challenges to enable the development of a new generation of highly efficient and flexible CSP plants. Keeping on working with CSP-sCO2 power cycles and investigating how to exploit air as operating fluid, SHARP-sCO2 will develop and validate novel enabling technologies in EU top level labs. SHARP-sCO2 will attain high temperatures and cycle efficiency, while guaranteeing reliable and flexible operation. Introducing a smart hybridization with PV by means of an innovative electric heaters, SHARP-sCO2 will maximize sCO2 operation and remuneration, exploiting PV affordability while counting on the unique energy storage capabilities of CSP.

SUSHEAT faces the main technological challenges to address the development of the key components for a new generation of highly efficient industrial heat upgrade systems fed by Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and waste heat recuperation. SUSHEAT technologies will explore renewable-based flexible and reliable heating solutions to power industrial processes. This will enable industry to transition away from polluting carbon-intensive fuels that dominate the energy mix. New and existing AI-assisted systems will be explored for optimal heat harvest, conversion and upgrade, and storage.

SOLAR based sCO2 Operating Low-cost plants.

USES4HEAT aims to demonstrate innovative, large scale, seasonal thermal energy storage (TES) solutions enabling a future decarbonized and reliable heating supply. USES4HEAT demonstrates, at TRL8 and for a one year test campaign, two innovative, cost-effective, large scale, seasonal underground TES (UTES) units (specifically, aquifer TES, ATES, and high temperature borehole TES, BTES) to maximize the availability and resilience of heating supply whilst reducing energy losses and environmental impact. USES4HEAT seeks to demonstrate the TES units as fully integrated units in commercial large-scale district heating networks (DHN) as well as integrating industrial waste heat recovery and fulfilling industrial thermal demand. In doing so, USES4HEAT also demonstrates six innovative key enabling components/technologies and their integration with seasonal TES: advanced ATES drilling equipment and remotely controlled machines halving drilling times, innovative layered BTES collectors plastic piping materials ensuring elevated performance at high temperature (95°C), innovative groundwater heat pump at high temperature using low global warming potential fluids, enhanced hybrid photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) solar panels integrated with UTES boosting sector coupling, concentrated solar thermal collectors fully integrated with large-scale seasonal UTES maximizing the exploitation of solar availability and diversifying the thermal energy sources, AI, big-data analytics and cloud based intelligent predictive energy management software and predictive operation and maintenance (O&M) tools for optimized integrated system operation.

eLITHE aims to support the electrification of the ceramic industries by demonstrating sustainable and cost-effective pathways to electrify high temperature thermal processes (>1,000ºC) from the ceramic industry. Three different processes will be demonstrated at 3 different pilot sites at relevant scale:
1. A ceramic frits smelter (1,100-1,500ºC) combining induction and resistive heating through electrodes.
2. A microwave-based calcination furnace (1,200ºC) for the calcination of alumina.
3. A tunnel kiln (1,100ºC) combining radiant walls and flexible hybrid burners for bricks and tiles firing.
These technologies will be endorsed through the application of advanced modelling techniques to develop Digital Twins (DTs) of each of them, as a core tool to support design and operation. eLITHE will also involve material science to develop novel products and refractory materials compositions adapted to the new requirements of electrified processes and will test waste materials derived from the ceramic industry for high temperature energy storage applications, improving the sector circularity.