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García-Rodríguez, Lourdes
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García-Rodríguez
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Lourdes
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Lourdes García-Rodríguez
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ACHIEVING 45% MICRO GAS TURBINE EFFICIENCY THROUGH HYBRIDIZATION WITH ORGANIC RANKINE CYCLESEscamilla, Antonio; Sánchez Martínez, David; García-Rodríguez, LourdesThe demand for affordable, secure, and sustainable energy storage solutions has grown significantly with the increasing focus on decarbonization and the adoption of renewable energy sources (RES). Power-to-Power (P2P) energy storage systems (ESS) have emerged as a promising solution, utilizing excess electricity from RES to produce hydrogen for future power generation. This document presents a study on increasing the round-trip efficiency of P2P ESS by improving the electric efficiency of micro gas turbines (mGT) and integrating waste heat to power (WHP) technology. The research investigates the potential of mGTs as prime movers in P2P ESS, aiming to break the 45% electric efficiency barrier that would make them competitive with other alternatives like internal combustion engines (ICE) and fuel cells (FC). Increasing the nominal electric efficiency of mGTs would lead to significant reductions in hydrogen consumption, system footprint, and overall capital expenditure. Thus, this research focuses on increasing the electrical efficiency of the mGT by proposing a hybridization between the recuperative Brayton cycle and bottoming organic Rankine cycles, reaching higher than 45% electrical efficiencies in a hybrid configuration. An exhaustive comparison of the main ORC systems hybridized with the recuperative Brayton cycles is presented. The results reveal that hybridizing an intercoolingrecuperative Brayton cycle with a simple recuperated ORC has the potential to increase electrical efficiency to 46%. The work also presents a sensitivity analysis to assess how the design parameters influence the performance of the hybrid thermodynamic cycle.- OPERATIONAL OPTIMISATION OF THE MAIN HEAT REJECTION UNIT OF CSP PLANTS BASED ON CARBON DIOXIDE MIXTURESCrespi, Francesco; Rodríguez-deArriba, Pablo; Sánchez, David; García-Rodríguez, LourdesThis research, developed in the framework of the SCARABEUS project, studies the off-design performance of transcritical power cycles running on CO2-SO2 mixtures in Concentrated Solar Power applications. The objective of this work is to identify optimum operational strategies that maximise net energy production when exposed to variable ambient temperature, with special focus on the operation of the Heat Rejection Unit (Air-Cooled Condenser). The power cycle is simulated in Thermoflex, modified with user-defined scripts to account for the specific off-design performance characteristics of key components. The Air-Cooled Condenser is modelled by means of an in-house Matlab tool, already validated in previous publications, able to accurately simulate the heat transfer process between working fluid and cooling medium (air) and to calculate auxiliary power consumption. Four different strategies are identified, depending on ambient temperature: variable or constant condensation pressure for ambient temperatures lower than the design value, and constant turbine inlet temperature or constant return temperature of the heat transfer fluid for ambient temperature higher than design value. The results show that a combination of variable and constant minimum cycle pressure is the best alternative for low ambient temperatures, enabling net system efficiencies higher than 41%. On the other hand, constant turbine inlet temperature enables higher net performance than constant return temperature of the heat transfer fluid, even if at the expense of a reduction in energy storage capacity for the same inventory of molten salts.
