The potential and technical challenges of the SCARABEUS project presented at the 7th Supercritical Power Cycles Symposium held at Soutwest Research Institute, TX
The potential and technical challenges of the SCARABEUS project presented at the 7th Supercritical Power Cycles Symposium held at Soutwest Research Institute, TX
The team at University of Seville, on behalf of the consortium, presented the potential of the SCARABEUS project to overcome the main limitations experienced by all power cycles in the usually warm environments where Concentrated Solar Power facilities are located. High ambient temperatures are inherent to these sites and they set an intrinsic limit to the achievable thermal performance of the power block, which translates into larger solar fields and worse economic performance.
SCARABEUS is exposed to the same constraint but it also exhibits a much higher resistance to performance deterioration when ambient temperature increases. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as free lunch and this comes at the cost of technical and economic barriers that the consortium is currently working to overcome. If you want to find out more, check the collective symposium paper here.
