Expected impacts

Technology

The CO2OLHEAT project will bring about pioneering technology changes that will result in the first-ever EU sCO2 WH2P application installed in a real industrial environment. Moreover, the project will give the REIIs the opportunity to become flexibility actors on the electricity grids and to evolve from consumers into prosumers.

This technology will pave the way to the following improvements:

  • Efficiency increase
  • Flexibility enhancements
  • Better integration into existing industrial plants
  • Higher operational safety
  • Significantly reduced size of power block components
  • Wide temperature range input
  • Scalability

Comparison between industry and power generation, taking into account different MW scale, is shown below:

Environment

The project will bring into a real industrial environment a technology that will be able to produce a completely clean energy. Even if carbon dioxide itself is a greenhouse gas, when it is withdrawn from the environment and isolated in a closed power cycle, it does not contribute to the greenhouse effect.

CO2OLHEAT aims to became a game-changer in the waste heat use, mainly because its unique technology will be able to contribute towards a very small environmental footprint.

The project will allow for

  • significant REIIs’ primary energy savings
  • GHG emissions reduction
  • up to 100% water consumption reduction (thanks to the sCO2 power cycle no-water requirement)
  • up to 30-40% of raw material components reduction (due to compact size of all the power bloc’s components)

As it is shown in the figure above, approximately 30% of the theoretically available WH in EU is suitable for CO2OLHEAT WH2P applications. If they could recover as little as 5% of this waste heat, it would result in immense primary energy savings as well as CO2 emissions reductions.

REIIs when 5% of WH recovered CEMEX in CO2OLHEAT project
Primary energy savings (GWh/year) 575 40
CO2 reduction (tCO2/year) >100.000 6.500

Economy

CO2OLHEAT WH2P application will offer an enhanced value proposition in a form of numerous financial benefits.

  • Reduction in electricity costs – targeted Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) is 4c€/kWh
  • Avoided costs of electricity for REIIs – CO2OLHEAT will cover approximately 10% of CEMEX plant’s needs, translating into 750 k€ per year
  • Payback period between 4 and 8 years
  • CAPEX ranging from 2,5M€ to 3M€/MW
  • Rate of return of 18% for the power block’s lifetime (est. 20 years)

(All the above values are expected impacts valid for a 2MW module and 8.000 operating hours/year, as it will be demonstrated in the CO2OLHEAT project; when scaling up to 10-15MW, the values can get more favourable)

Flag of Europe This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N° 101022831