Design of a high-temperature heat to power conversion facility for testing supercritical CO2 equipment and packaged power units

This paper addresses the need of bridging between fundamental energy research and industrial exploitation of technologies by presenting a state of the art experimental facility to investigate pilot heat exchangers and plants dealing with high temperature waste heat recovery and conversion. The facility comprises a 830 kW process air heater with an exhaust mass flow rate of 1.0 kg/s at 70 mbarg and maximum temperature of 780 degrees C. The heater has a 2.0 m long test section for the installation and characterization of waste heat recovery heat exchangers. The heat sink is a 500 kW water dry cooler with full control of flow rate and temperature of the cooling stream. The high-temperature heat to power conversion facility hosts a 50 kWe power conversion unit based on the simple recuperated Joule-Brayton cycle with supercritical CO2 (sCO(2)) as working fluid. The packaged, plug and play sCO(2) system utilizes a single-shaft Compressor-Generator-Turbine unit. The paper discusses the main design features of the test facility as well as operation and safety considerations.