![[Newsletter] Check out the progress of the DESOLINATION project from January to June 2024!](https://desolination.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DESOLINATION-newsletter1.png)
We’re thrilled to announce that the second newsletter from the DESOLINATION project is now available! Over the past six months, our collaborative team has made significant strides towards our goal of decarbonizing the desalination process in arid regions.
TEMISTH, responsible for developing heat exchangers using additive manufacturing, highlighted its work on addressing production challenges and complex simulations involving supercritical CO2 and molten salt.
Visitors could meet us at Booth U32, Hall 4, Paris Porte de Versailles.
The global community acknowledges water demand and accessibility as major challenges impacting human well-being. Forward Osmosis (FO) desalination coupled with concentrate solar power might represent a promising solution to combine water production with renewable sources. This work assesses the performance of a liquid-liquid separator (coalescer), an important component of the FO process, when using a polymeric thermo-responsive draw agent (PAGB2000). Experimental characterization of the coalescer is carried out for different regeneration temperatures (from 50 to 80 °C), residence time, draw concentration (from 0.30 to 0.60) and metal meshes. The separation efficiency of the coalescer can be as high as 95% for high residence time and regeneration temperatures (> 70 °C). Eventually, an analytical expression of the coalescer efficiency as function of the main operating parameters is proposed both to support desalination plant design and to enable understanding its applicability beyond its original context.
Authors:
Igor Matteo Carraretto, Davide Scapinello, Riccardo Bellini, Riccardo Simonetti, Luca Molinaroli, Luigi Pietro Maria Colombo, Giampaolo Manzolini – Dipartimento di Energia, Politecnico di Milano, Via Lambruschini 4, Milano 20156, Italy
Together, our project partners, TEMISTH and POLIMI and LUT were pleased to attend the prestigious Turbo Expo (Turbomachinery Technical Conference & Exposition) in London, England, United Kingdom, from June 24-28, 2024.
TEMISTH and POLIMI showcased their latest work on Preliminary characterization of the desolination project demo plant: design and off-design operability.
Marco Astolfi, from Politecnico di Milano (our project coordinator) was invited to present the project and participate in discussions to share ideas and gather suggestions from the supercritical CO2 community.
LUT played an active role in several panel discussions, focusing on lessons learned from past and ongoing experimental sCO2 projects.
The conference offered valuable opportunities for networking and exchanging insights with colleagues from around the world.
Attendees also had the chance to engage with a series of high-quality scientific presentations. The event proved to be a source of inspiration, providing the LUT team with fresh ideas for both current and future projects.
This year’s event focused on the critical steps needed to achieve a net-zero future in propulsion and power. Attendees explored disruptive technologies that go beyond traditional gas turbine solutions, including advancements in hydrogen. The program also highlighted the broader ecosystem supporting sustainable products, such as green energy for low-carbon synthetic fuels, as well as key areas like certification, regulations, and economies of scale. Participants contributed to shaping the collective roadmap towards a more innovative and sustainable future.
Carbon dioxide binarFIGy mixtures are increasingly considered as working fluids in transcritical power cycles, due to the capability to perform liquid-phase compression even at high environmental temperatures. However, a robust thermodynamic model is essential for optimal and reliable design conditions. It is widely recognized that fine-tuning the equation of state with experimental vapor-liquid equilibrium data of the mixture significantly enhances its reliability.
In this work, a new apparatus dedicated to vapour-liquid equilibrium measurements of mixtures is presented. The proposed method consists of a constant-volume system, where bubble points are identified from the divergence of slope of the isochoric lines between the two-phase and liquid regions, in the temperature-pressure plane. The temperature and pressure limits of the apparatus are 503 K and 25 MPa. Bubble points of CO2 binary mixtures with hexafluorobenzene (C6F6) and n-pentane (C5H12) have been measured and compared with previous literature data for validation purposes. Then, the CO2 mixture with octafluorocyclobutane (c-C4F8) is experimentally studied, addressing a literature gap in bubble point data.
The data are used to calibrate the thermodynamic model, leading to affordable design conditions of the power cycle compared to the non-optimized thermodynamics scenario, in a concentrated solar power tower plant.
Authors:
