The Gas Technology Institute (GTI®), Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®) and General Electric Global Research (GE-GR) are executing the Supercritical Transformational Electric Power, “STEP” project, to design, construct, commission, and operate an integrated and reconfigurable 10 MWe sCO2 [supercritical CO2] Pilot Plant Test Facility. The $156* million project is funded $115 million by the US DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL Award Number DE-FE0028979) and $41* million by the team members, component suppliers, and Joint Industry Program (JIP) members. The facility is currently under final assembly and is located at SwRI’s San Antonio, Texas, USA campus. This project is a significant step toward sCO2 cycle based power generation commercialization and is informing the performance, operability, and scale-up to commercial plants. Significant progress has been made on this STEP project. The design phase is complete (Phase 1) and included procurements of long-lead time delivery components. Now well into Phase 2, a ground-breaking was held in 2018, and civil work and the construction of a dedicated 22,000 ft2 building was completed in 2020. Most major equipment is in final fabrication or delivered to site as of the end of 2021. These efforts have already provided valuable project learnings for technology commercialization. At time of paper writing most equipment has been received and installed, and commissioning will begin in the first half of 2022. An update on commissioning and experience with sCO2 equipment is given here-in.
The industrial sector contributes approximately 28% of global CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions from energy-intensive industries can be reduced by converting waste heat into electricity. This represents a low-cost, zero-emissions power generation option with near-term deployment opportunities. One energy-intensive industry is cement production. Two cement plant heat sources are flue gas streams from preheater and clinker cooler, with temperatures of 250–450 °C. Potential energy conversion systems include Organic Rankine (ORC), steam Rankine (SRC), and supercritical CO2 (sCO2) power cycles. ORC/SRCs have been commercially deployed in cement plants. However, sCO2 power cycles offer benefits such as high thermal stability of CO2, higher cycle efficiencies, and compact power generation equipment. The paper is focused on multi-objective optimization of four sCO2 cycle layouts (Recuperated, Re-compression, Partial recuperative, and cascade) and comparison with ORCs/SRCs. The optimization considers waste heat temperatures of > 300°C. The results show that sCO2 power cycles can reach cycle efficiencies up to 30 %, which is higher than corresponding ORCs and almost similar to SRCs. However, cycle efficiency is not the only parameter to evaluate waste heat utilization. More meaningful parameters are the net power and capital costs. Results show higher power outputs from the sCO2 cycle compared to ORCs and SRC.
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