The National Key Research and Development Program "Research on Key Basic Issues of Supercritical CO₂ Solar Thermal Power Generation" project passed the acceptance smoothly
On August 13th, the National Key Research and Development Program Renewable Energy and Hydrogen Energy Technology Key Special Project "Research on Key Basic Issues of Supercritical CO₂ Solar Thermal Power Generation" led by the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the Institute of Electrical Engineering) successfully passed the acceptance of the expert group. The attendees included 10 experts from the project acceptance expert group, Shiyue Zhang(project supervisor of the High-tech Research and Development Center of the National Natural Science Foundation of China), Zixin Li(deputy director of the Institute of Electrical Engineering) and research backbones of 18 project participating units, including the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University, Tsinghua University and Xi’an Thermal Power Research Institute.
Zixin Li said in his speech that in the five years of the project implementation, the project team has not only completed scientific research at a high level but also accomplished the science and technology support task of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Besides, he hoped to have more cooperation with leaders and experts in the future to jointly promote the development of the industry and achieve more outcomes.
Dr. Zhifeng Wang, the project leader and research fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineering, reported in detail on the implementation and completion of the project from following five aspects: the overall progress of the project, the important results and benefits obtained, the organization and implementation management, the major problems and suggestions in the organization and implementation of the project and the project funding. The operating situation of the 200 kW supercritical CO₂ solar thermal power station at the Yanqing Scientific Research and Experimental Base of the Institute of Electrical Engineering was also demonstrated.
As a novel energy technology, supercritical CO₂ working fluid power generation technology has the advantages of high efficiency, strong flexibility, environmentally friendly and low cost, making it have broad application prospects and development space. The project team conducted research mainly focusing on three fundamental scientific questions of supercritical CO₂ power generation.
(1) The design theory and method of high temperature receiver were proposed. The spatiotemporal synergistic absorption, conversion and heat transfer mechanism of concentrated solar radiation in the flexible discontinuous particle flow was established. Three types of concentrators and four types of receivers(including 700°C/1 MWth solid particle receivers) were developed. Two methods of high-density heat flux measurement were proposed.
(2) The impact and mechanism of heat storage/release mode on system performance was presented. The mechanism of inhibiting molten salt corrosion on metal was discovered. A breakthrough has been made in matching heat transfer characteristics between high-temperature solid particles and supercritical CO₂ under the conditions of variable heat flow, variable temperature and drastic change in physical properties. Three kinds of heat storage and heat exchangers (including 550 ℃/1 MWth) were developed.
(3) The interaction mechanism between the supercritical CO₂ and the thermal work conversion process of the turbine was put forward. The constitutive matching relation of the main parameters of the high-efficiency solar thermal power system with high solar flow, high temperature, high expansion ratio and high specific work was established. A full-system model of light-heat-electricity energy conversion with supercritical CO₂ flow as the core was built. The 550℃/200kW supercritical CO₂ turbine generator set was developed. A demonstration system of "solar-heat-electricity" was established and put into operation.
The expert group spoke highly of the results achieved in the implementation of the project, unanimously agreed to pass the performance evaluation, and recommended that the project team promote the implementation in the future.
