PRINCESS

PRINCESS

triPly peRiodic mINimal surfaCEs for Solar plantS (2024-2027)

PRINCESS is an EU-funded project through 2023 CETPartnership joint call, works on CSP receiver and air-to-sCO2 HX, with the goal of developing, prototyping and testing both a novel air solar receiver module equipped withTriply Periodic Minimal Surfaces (TPMS) and a new TPMS-based air-to-sCO2 heat exchanger, to target efficiency improvement and cost reduction at the same time. PRINCESS has been accepted whitin the scope of the call module CM2023-03A to support the development, scale up and market uptake of enhanced renewable energy technologies, contributing to zero-emission power production, in line with the Green Deal and the EU’s energy policy and decarbonisation targets. The innovative components developed in PRINCESS will reduce the cost of the renewable energy delivered by a CSP plant thus enhancing the competitiveness of this technology, while fostering the European leadership in CSP.

Unlike other heat transfer fluids such as molten salts and liquid metals, the former limiting the maximum temperature to values of about 600°C, and the latter still subject to limitations due to safety issues, air is an ideal working fluid in terms of its compatibility with materials, the temperatures that can be reached, and not least its free cost. Its use at high temperatures, which are necessary for the operation of sCO2 cycles, is limited by the low convective heat transfer coefficient, which results in too high material temperatures. Just to overcome this problem, PRINCESS proposes the use of TPMS to increase the heat transfer coefficient.

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