Archive for category: Others

 

The SCARABEUS team at University of Seville keeps growing. USE is very happy to welcome Pablo Rodríguez to support the optimization and integration tasks. Find some more information about him below and follow his activities through LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablo-enrique-rodr%C3%ADguez-de-arriba-9088b91b7/

 

 

 

Pablo Rodríguez standing in front of a Ljungström turbine at the lab

 

I’m Pablo Rodríguez, a Sevillian engineer recently graduated from the master’s degree in Industrial Engineering at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería (University of Seville). Specialised in Energy Engineering, I’m keen on topics such as energy efficiency, process optimization, power generation, renewable energies, SWRO plants or refrigeration. It’s in the latter of these subjects that I wrote my BSc and MSc theses: performing an analysis about the international regulations of refrigerants (anybody sees the link to some of the dopants used in SCARABEUS?).

 

I just joined the Thermal Power Group (Department of Energy Engineering, University of Seville) as a researcher. I’m sincerely enthusiastic about being part of the SCARABEUS project, in which I promised to put all my commitment and energy to achieve the best results.

 

Researchers from City pass milestone on the route to PhD

 

This week two researchers from the SCARABEUS research team at City, University of London, successfully completed their transfer from MPhil to PhD. This milestone, which has been completed just over a year since beginning at City, marks the successful transition from registration as a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) student to a full PhD candidate.

 

For the transfer, Mr Omar Aqel and Ms Salma Salah both prepared a technical report containing a literature review and an update on their work to date, and presented a 30-minute presentation over Microsoft Teams, followed by Q&A, to an internal audience of academics and researchers from City.

 

Mr Omar Aqel presented his report entitled “Optimization of cycle and turbine design for small-scale solar power plants employing CO₂-based working fluids”. Within Omar’s work he has investigated the effect of candidate dopants on optimal cycle conditions within CSP applications, with a particular focus on the expansion process. Results highlighted the change in working fluid properties such as molecular weight, speed of sound, density, and the adiabatic coefficient. Having also explored the sensitivity of turbine design to dopant type and amount, Omar will now focus on the application of CO₂-based working fluids in small-scale power plants. He aims to investigate their feasibility using an integrated system approach which accounts for turbomachinery design restrictions that are unique to small-scale installations.

 

 

 

Ms Salma Salah presented her report entitled “Advanced design optimisation methods for supercritical CO₂ multi-stage axial turbines”. Within Salma’s work she discussed the various aspects of axial turbine design including design methodology, previous preliminary and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) studies on sCO₂ turbines, in addition to existing prototypes and conceptual designs for sCO₂ turbomachinery. In this work, 100 kW and 100 MW design models have been developed and a parametric study has been conducted to examine the effect of various design parameters on the performance of a small-scale sCO₂ turbine. This work was concluded by detailing the future steps for her research.