The STEP 10 MWe sCO2 Pilot Plant Demonstration

Abstract

A team led by Gas Technology Institute (GTI), Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®) and General Electric Global Research (GE-GR), along with the University of Wisconsin and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), is actively executing a project called “STEP” [Supercritical Transformational Electric Power project], to design, construct, commission, and operate an integrated and reconfigurable 10 MWe sCO2 [supercritical CO2] Pilot Plant Test Facility located at SwRI’s San Antonio, Texas campus. The $119 million project is funded $84 million by the US DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL Award Number DE-FE0028979) and $35 million cost share by the team, component suppliers and others interested in sCO2 technology. This project is a significant step toward sCO2 cycle based power generation commercialization and will inform the performance, operability, and scale-up to commercial facilities. Supercritical CO2 (sCO2) power cycles are Brayton cycles that utilize supercritical CO2 working fluid to convert heat into power. They offer the potential for higher system efficiencies than other energy conversion technologies such as steam Rankine or organic Rankine cycles, especially when operating at elevated temperatures. sCO2 power cycles are being considered for a wide range of applications including fossil-fired systems, waste heat recovery, concentrated solar power, and nuclear. The pilot plant design, procurement, fabrication, and construction are ongoing at the time of this publication. By the end of this 6-year project, the operability of the sCO2 power cycle will be demonstrated and documented starting with facility commissioning as a simple closed recuperated cycle configuration initially operating at a 500°C (932°F) turbine inlet temperature and progressing to a recompression closed Brayton cycle technology (RCBC) configuration operating at 715°C (1319 °F).

System Design, Optimization and 2nd Law Analysis of a 100 MWe Double Reheat s-CO2 Power Plant at Full Load and Part Loads

“…Despite having several benefits mentioned above and having been introduced several decades ago in the 1960s by Angelino [13] and Feher [14], the power generation technology using s-CO 2 is still at the testing stage with test facilities in the 1-250 kW range and the largest pilot plant being of 10 MWe capacity built by the Gas Turbine Institute, Southwest Research Institute and General Electric Global Research together in San Antonio, Texas, USA [15]. Several review articles were recently published highlighting the benefits, drawbacks, state-of-the-art and future work to be taken up to make s-CO 2 power a reality at a higher scale [11,12,[16][17][18][19][20].…”

A Code for the Preliminary Design of Cooled Supercritical CO2 Turbines and Application to the Allam Cycle

“…Supercritical CO 2 power cycles have been proposed for lowcarbon electricity generation from different primary energy sources: concentrated solar [1,2] and nuclear energy [3], as well as fossil fuels [4], e.g., in place of steam cycles to enhance the efficiency of combined cycle power plants [5], or in oxy-fuel power plants [6] to ease CO 2 capture. Among these applications, oxycombustion technology recently sparked interest because it has the potential to achieve near-zero or even negative (in case the fuel is biomass) fossil CO 2 emissions with a competitive cost and while producing dispatchable electricity (and cogenerated heat, if required).…”

Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Turbine Design and Arrangement Optimization

“…In this study, the parameters of the speed triangle were optimized, and the total power and efficiency of the turbine met the design requirements. Marion et al developed a sCO 2 turbine applied to sCO 2 -based power cycling to realize concentrated solar energy conversion in the SunShot project (Marion et al, 2019). In addition, Kalra et al also jointly designed a 16 MW sCO 2 turbine conceptual diagram in the STEP (Supercritical Transformational Electric Power) project (Kalra et al, 2014).…”