Design of a 2 MW Molten Salt Driven Supercritical CO2 Cycle and Turbomachinery for the SOLARSCO2OL Demonstration Project

Supercritical CO2 (sCO2) power cycles have been identified as technology enablers for increasing the cost-competitiveness of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants. Compared to steam cycles, sCO2 cycles have the advantage of allowing higher inlet turbine temperatures, while also deploying turbomachinery that can be a ten-fold more compact. Ongoing research in CSP focuses mainly in developing new receiver and storage concepts able to withstand such required higher temperatures, alongside new heat exchangers that enable coupling to a sCO2 cycle. Meanwhile, advancements in sCO2 turbomachinery have taken place in research projects aimed at investigating the technical feasibility of the cycle, including the optimized design of its individual components and new cycle configurations. Among these, only few focus in demonstrating a full-integrated system, including cycle control and dynamics, and only two worldwide have started plans for MW-scale pilots, none of them in Europe. The EU-funded SOLARSCO2OL project aims at demonstrating a first-of-a-kind 2 MW gross simple-recuperated sCO2 Brayton cycle driven by heat provided by molten salts similar to those deployed in commercial CSP plants, which are able to operate at temperatures of up to 580°C. This paper introduces the project objectives and implementation plan, to then focus primarily on the results derived from the first year in specific relation to the conceptual design of each of 2 MW scale power cycle and its key components, including also the proposed integration and operational regimes, expected thermodynamic performance at nominal point, and up-scaling considerations.