Thermal Technologies for Decarbonization

The overarching objective and vision of BRISK II is to establish a centre of excellence in the field of 2nd and 3rd generation biofuels via the uniting of leading European research infrastructures. Through an integrated approach the entire value chain is represented: from the first preparation of the biomass feedstock, to conversion, then treatment and finally through to efficient utilization. Traditional and novel biogenic sources including marine biomass are in focus for user-driven investigations with a wide spectrum of powerful and, in many cases, unique laboratory-based and pilot-scale equipment. Activities will serve to strengthen academia-industry cooperation, spurring innovation towards the advancement of fundamental and applied research in thermochemical and biochemical biomass conversion and biorefinery.

Gas plays an important role in the move towards a more sustainable energy mix. However, the liberalization of gas markets, diversification of supply, renewable biogas injections and changes to regulations have resulted in a problem with considerable fluctuations of the gas quality in the grid. On-site gas quality monitoring has therefore become an urgent matter in the gas industry, driven by factors of customer protection, efficient energy conversion by gas appliances, lowering of greenhouse gases emissions, and economical effectiveness.
The solution offered and being under development is aimed to solve this problem by providing a novel approach for cost efficient energy flow metering with the means of standard ultrasonic gas flow meters, enabling real-time smart metering at considerably lower cost compared to current solutions.

The project aims to develop, test and verify effective thermal energy storage (TES) systems for Stirling engine based power generation, fueled by concentrated solar irradiation (CSP). With an adequate thermal storage, this type of power plants produces cost-effective solar electricity below $100 / MWh, around the clock and can act as base load and load balancing source to the grid. For Stirling engine-based CSP to be competitive with traditional CSP steam turbine systems with thermal storage, a new storage concept is required that can store heat over 800 °C up to 15 hours to reach a yearly availability of 80%. The project will develop such a storage concept for Stirling engines while meeting the industrial requirements for life time and product cost.

FLUWS aims to develop and validate a more flexible, reliable, environmentally friendly and cost-effective thermal energy storage (TES) system futureproofed for next generation concentrating solar power (CSP) plants operating at higher temperatures and hybridized with PV, which are recognized as the two main paths for reaching cost-efficiency of CSP in the near future. Specifically, FLUWS validates up to TRL 5 a novel TES concept that ensures elevated thermal efficiency with minimum environmental impact thanks to on the one hand the upcycling of waste and residual materials from the ceramic industry and the use of air as heat transfer fluid, and on the other thanks to building on previous consortium know-how in the development of new cost-effective radial packed-bed TES and materials for high temperature applications. The new FLUWS TES will enable more flexible and modular CSP systems as it will have embedded electric heaters driven by renewable electricity and will be designed for easier integration with compact gas Brayton cycles (i.e. supercritical CO2 and air-driven), thus facilitating the provision of additional services from CSP to the grid and widening the applications of CSP as a competitive technology for combined heat and power in the industrial sector.

Wind power is one of the most promising pathways for a future fossil-free society due to its abundant resources and continuously decreasing costs. From 2013 to 2022, the global total installed capacity has grown 3 times from 300 GW to 900 GW. In Sweden, wind power has become the third largest electricity source since 2013, and its installed capacity has reached 12.1 GW by 2021. However, wind turbines themselves present another environmental issue when their useful life is over, since they will become a form of hazardous waste that cannot be decomposed naturally. Especially the wind blades, they are mostly made of glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP) and can be longer than 60 m. On a global scale, it was expected that the total annual amount of end-of-life (EOL) wind blade can reach 683 ktons in 2025. In Sweden, the cumulative number of installed wind turbine has reached 813 by 2005. Based on the 20 years’ average life time for wind turbines, there will be more than 2400 pieces of wind blades need to be disposed by 2025. With the rapid growth of wind turbine installation after 2005, EOL wind blade will increase dramatically in the near future in Sweden, which is challenging the Swedish wind energy companies and recycling companies.

Performance Untapped Modulation for Power and Heat via Energy Accumulation Technologies with a consortium consisting of 14 participants from 8 countries

The European Geothermica ERA-Net and the Joint Programming Platform Smart Energy Systems ERA-Net have launched Joint Call 2021, Accelerating the Heating and Cooling Transition. This initiative aims to enhance collaboration among national and regional programmes dedicated to integrating energy systems and advancing heating and cooling technologies. Under this framework, the HECTAPUS project focuses on exploring the possibilities of integrating Phase Change Materials (PCMs) with underground thermal energy storage and heat pump technologies together with six partners from Norway, Türkiye, and Sweden.

HYBRIDplus aims to pioneer the next generation of CSP with an advanced high-density and high-temperature thermal energy storage (TES) system capable of providing a high degree of dispatchability at a low cost and with a much lower environmental burden than the State of the Art. This thermal storage is based on the Phase Change Material (PCM) technology in a cascade configuration that can reproduce the effect of a thermocline and integrates recycled metal wool in its nucleus. This enables hybridization with PV by acting as an electric heater transforming non-dispatchable renewable electricity into thermal stored energy ready to be dispatched when needed. HYBRIDplus proposes a novel concept to hybridize PV+Cascade PCM-TES with CSP configuration based on a high-temperature supercritical CO2 cycle working at 600 ºC. This new plant is called to form the backbone of the next-generation energy system thanks to higher efficiency and lower LCOE than state-of-the-art technology.

I-UPS aims to develop and validate a first-of-a-kind (FOAK), cost-effective and reliable high-temperature industrial heat pump fully integrated in a flexible energy system for industrial medium temperature (~400°C) heat decarbonisation.
I-UPS validate up to TRL 5 a FOAK high-temperature heat pump, based on Stirling cycles and exploiting a non-toxic, inert, zero ozone depletion potential and zero global warming potential fluid, able to deliver decarbonized heat up to 400°C. No other commercial alternatives are available achieving this heat delivery temperature at efficiencies higher than 100%. The developed heat pump provides enhanced performance thanks to the optimization of key subcomponents, such as optimized static and dynamic sealing solutions and compact heat exchangers enabled by genetic algorithm based design optimization and additive manufacturing techniques. I-UPS provides also a seamless integration of the developed high temperature heat pump in flexible energy systems including molten salts based thermal energy storage (TES) for on-demand decarbonized industrial heat based on RES electricity. The integrated heat pump configuration will enable higher modularity, flexibility, and efficiency for heating decarbonisation also leveraging waste heat recovery and contributing to the circularity of the industrial sector.

The purpose of this project is to investigate MD technology paired with acid stream quench for improved, cost-effective flue gas condensate treatment.

Wastewater streams can be harnessed to recover valuable materials in a circular manufacturing concept. In this project we will investigate how membrane distillation can play a role for wastewater treatment, leading to improved environmental performance and energy savings through waste heat utilization.

The project is a design and implementation project for a microgrid in Tezpur University, Assam region, India. Local biowaste will be converted to syngas, which is used to power a genset that is integrated with the power grid of the campus. A PV park is also connected to the grid. Integrating aspects such as buffering and demand response are important factors.

The aim of this research project is to optimize the design of molten salt electric heaters, documenting main challenges and solutions to address them, and thereby laying the grounds towards a subsequent heater design verification and validation on-site, botha prototype at Exheat’s lab and a MW scale heater to be tested under real operating conditions.

Pilots4U Aims To Set Up One Very Visible, Easily Accessible Network Of Open Access Pilot And Multipurpose Demo-Infrastructures For The European Bio-Economy With Europe-Wide Coverage

P2P project aims to demonstrate at the MW-scale (TRL7) the operation of an innovative, cost effective and more reliable complete fluidized particle-driven Concentrated Solar Technology that can be applied for both power and industrial heat production. The prototype to be developed and tested is based on the modification and the improvement of an experimental loop built in the framework of the previous H2020 project Next-CSP. It will include all the components of a commercial plant, a multi-tube fluidized bed solar receiver (2 MWth), an electricity-driven particle superheater (300 kW), a hot store, a particle-to-working fluid crossflow fluidized bed heat exchanger (2 MWth), a turbine (hybrid Brayton cycle gas turbine, 1.2 MWe), a cold store and a vertical particle transport system (~100 m). The addition of an electricity-driven particle superheater will enable to validate a hybridized PV-CSP system working at 750°C that is expected to result in electricity cost reduction and efficiency improvement with respect to state-of-the-art.

The aim of this project is to design, assess and develop an innovative technical cost-effective solutions for integrated power-to-heat and thermal energy storage systems to satisfy the heat demand of the hard to abate industrial sector. The final goal of the project is to provide design recommendations for Kyoto Group’s next generation thermal energy storage and power-to-heat solution.

SCO2OP-TES project aims to develop and validate up to TRL5, in UNIGE lab hosted in Tirreno Power (TP) Vado Ligure Combined Cycle power plant (CCGT), the next generation of Power-to-Heat-to-Power (P2H2P) energy storage solutions. SCO2OP-TES solution is able to guarantee affordable long duration (>10hrs) and large scale energy storage (multi MW/MWh) to facilitate bulky RES integration in EU energy systems as well as to facilitate large scale integration of RES and to convert traditional power plants (CCGT, CHP) – both standalone and those in industrial parks - into flexible renewable energy plants. This will be crucial particularly in a future scenario where their role will be more and more different and industrial process will be more and more electrified.

SHARP-sCO2 addresses key technological challenges to enable the development of a new generation of highly efficient and flexible CSP plants. Keeping on working with CSP-sCO2 power cycles and investigating how to exploit air as operating fluid, SHARP-sCO2 will develop and validate novel enabling technologies in EU top level labs. SHARP-sCO2 will attain high temperatures and cycle efficiency, while guaranteeing reliable and flexible operation. Introducing a smart hybridization with PV by means of an innovative electric heaters, SHARP-sCO2 will maximize sCO2 operation and remuneration, exploiting PV affordability while counting on the unique energy storage capabilities of CSP.

SUSHEAT faces the main technological challenges to address the development of the key components for a new generation of highly efficient industrial heat upgrade systems fed by Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and waste heat recuperation. SUSHEAT technologies will explore renewable-based flexible and reliable heating solutions to power industrial processes. This will enable industry to transition away from polluting carbon-intensive fuels that dominate the energy mix. New and existing AI-assisted systems will be explored for optimal heat harvest, conversion and upgrade, and storage.

USES4HEAT aims to demonstrate innovative, large scale, seasonal thermal energy storage (TES) solutions enabling a future decarbonized and reliable heating supply. USES4HEAT demonstrates, at TRL8 and for a one year test campaign, two innovative, cost-effective, large scale, seasonal underground TES (UTES) units (specifically, aquifer TES, ATES, and high temperature borehole TES, BTES) to maximize the availability and resilience of heating supply whilst reducing energy losses and environmental impact. USES4HEAT seeks to demonstrate the TES units as fully integrated units in commercial large-scale district heating networks (DHN) as well as integrating industrial waste heat recovery and fulfilling industrial thermal demand. In doing so, USES4HEAT also demonstrates six innovative key enabling components/technologies and their integration with seasonal TES: advanced ATES drilling equipment and remotely controlled machines halving drilling times, innovative layered BTES collectors plastic piping materials ensuring elevated performance at high temperature (95°C), innovative groundwater heat pump at high temperature using low global warming potential fluids, enhanced hybrid photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) solar panels integrated with UTES boosting sector coupling, concentrated solar thermal collectors fully integrated with large-scale seasonal UTES maximizing the exploitation of solar availability and diversifying the thermal energy sources, AI, big-data analytics and cloud based intelligent predictive energy management software and predictive operation and maintenance (O&M) tools for optimized integrated system operation.

eLITHE aims to support the electrification of the ceramic industries by demonstrating sustainable and cost-effective pathways to electrify high temperature thermal processes (>1,000ºC) from the ceramic industry. Three different processes will be demonstrated at 3 different pilot sites at relevant scale:
1. A ceramic frits smelter (1,100-1,500ºC) combining induction and resistive heating through electrodes.
2. A microwave-based calcination furnace (1,200ºC) for the calcination of alumina.
3. A tunnel kiln (1,100ºC) combining radiant walls and flexible hybrid burners for bricks and tiles firing.
These technologies will be endorsed through the application of advanced modelling techniques to develop Digital Twins (DTs) of each of them, as a core tool to support design and operation. eLITHE will also involve material science to develop novel products and refractory materials compositions adapted to the new requirements of electrified processes and will test waste materials derived from the ceramic industry for high temperature energy storage applications, improving the sector circularity.