Technical objectives

Increasing coal and lignite power plants’ flexibility

To define and simulate future coal and lignite power plants’ work-flows and scenarios for advanced and complex flexible demand operations with massive renewable integration in the network

To enable entire load range optimization with fast load changes, fast start-ups and shut-do

To develop advanced equipment solutions contributing to increase modularity and reduce maintenance’s costs through the reduction of the turbomachinery size and to validate the solution at component level and at global level by simulating different scenarios/critical and nominal use cases

To analyse and define new boiler models with advanced thermo-hydraulics and mechanical characteristics to obtain sCO2 boiler solution, including detailed development

To design and validate a new turbomachinery system through:

  1. analysis and definition of shaft lines requirements;
  2. compressor requirements and design near critical point operation;
  3. turbine modelling for sCO2 expansion.

To design and test a new concept of compact heat exchanger for the cycle able to work with high efficiency, speed and reliability under high CO2 pressure and low pinch temperature

To define and test state of the art materials used for power generation and high temperature applications,

  1. stainless steels (martensitic steel, austenitic/super-austenitic alloys) suitable to sCO2 environment

To develop Instrumentation & Control (I&C) solutions for fast load change transients using advanced, model-based control design, supported by dynamic system-level modelling and simulation

To design a 25MWe cycle ready to be implemented within demonstration projects from 2020.