Supercritical carbon dioxide/alternative fluids blends for efficiency upgrade of solar power plant

The future of Concentrated Solar Power technology relies on significant cost reduction to be competitive against both fossil fuel power stations and renewable technologies as photovoltaics and wind. Most of the research activity on CSP focuses on supercritical CO2 cycles to increase the solar plant efficiency together with a cost reduction. Recently, several research groups have started investigating the blending of CO2 with small amounts of additives to boost the thermodynamic cycle performance. The potentialities of N2O4 and TiCl4 were already demonstrated from theoretical point of view. The SCARABEUS project aims at developing and demonstrating CO2 blends in concentrating solar power plant with maximum temperatures of 700°C, power cycle efficiency above 50% and cost of electricity below 96 €/MWh. The innovative fluid and newly developed components will be validated at a relevant scale (300 kWth) for 300 h in a CSP-like operating environment.