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HyCool 7th General Assembly in Barcelona

15 de November de 202115 de November de 2021 by AdminCometPublishing

After two years, and the COVID_19 lockdown consequences, the HyCool consortium has met again in person, to hold the 7^th General Assembly in Barcelona. The event has been organized by the Project Coordinator Veolia and IDP Ingeniería during the 9^th and 10^th of November 2021. The objective of the Assembly has been to review and update the project progress and to discuss the final steps in a moment where the project is near to the commissioning stage.

The project has suffered several delays because of the COVID_19 crisis and for other consequences of it regarding the civil works execution, the limitations on the logistics and transport of the equipment from different points in Europe (Austria and Germany) to Spain where the pilots are being installed, and even, the availability of some of the core materials for the solar field installation. Nevertheless, the current situation is optimistic as almost 85% of the pilot works in Givaudan and Bo de Debó are completed including civil works, installation of equipment and the solar mirrors.

During the first session, work package leaders presented the progress made with the core technologies focused on the installation of the equipment, the demonstration activities, the exploitation, communication, and coordination activities.

HyCool Consortium during the 7th General Assembly

After the project coordinator Veolia welcome words, the partners involved in the manufacturing of the equipment, installation processes and the Pilot Site representatives discussed about the commissioning and demonstration stages next year when the project shall be closed. Up to now, the delays are minor and depend on some circumstances regarding adjustments and integration of the systems with the Energy Management system implemented by Ecotherm.

Many interesting results have been obtained and now work packages 7, 8 and 9 that cover environmental and socio-economic analysis, exploitation and communication activities may progress towards the planning of workshops, communication of energy management simulation tools available on the HyCool website, the potential commercialization of the technologies designed and implemented, and the visibility of the companies that have made conscious decision at introducing renewable energy in the industrial field. During the WP9 about communication and dissemination activities, COMET and the partners discussed about the coming events, workshops and training sessions based on Virtual Reality implemented by AIT, IDP and the support of Ecotherm and Fahrenheit.

During the visits to the pilot sites, the partners could see the installations at Givaudan, the visit was focused on the solar field and the Ecotherm technical room. Ecotherm explained the process about the generation of steam and hot water from the solar energy collected in the solar panels, and the pending works until the commissioning.

Ecotherm equipment in the technical room at Givaudan Pilot Site

For the other hand, in Bo de Debò pilot site, the partners visited the technical room where Faherenheit and Ecotherm equipment are installed. The solar collectors are not yet installed because some structural works must be performed on the building that will support them.

Fahrenheit equipment in the technical room at Bo de Debò Pilot Site

R2M also took advantage of this visit to scan the technical rooms and solar field with the Matterport camera to improve the virtual reality environment and some of the exploitation and commercialization activities planned. These results will be shared in further press releases and newsletters of the project.

Matterport scanning at Bo de Debò Pilot Site

This is the first face-to-face meeting after COVID_19 crisis and with the works performed in a very finished stage. Next Assembly will be held in Germany around May 2022, but some visits and actions to the pilot sites shall happen in between.

HyCool Project is in its final stage and 2022 will make possible to demonstrate how efficient and profitable is the HyCool and thermo-solar energy in industry.

Measuring the Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts of the HyCool System

6 de October de 202114 de July de 2021 by AdminCometPublishing

Within the HyCool project (Industrial Cooling through Hybrid system based on solar heat), a fundamental point is to determine the environmental and socio-economic benefits of the innovative HyCool solution compared to the state of the art.

The HyCool project will introduce for the first time the solar energy in industrial cooling systems, as the result of the integration of 3 main innovations (Figure 1):

Solar steam generation (concentrating solar collectors);
Phase change materials (PCM) storages; and
Highly efficient and flexible hybrid chiller technology.

With the installation of the demonstration sites in Givaudan (chemical industry) and Bo de Debó (food industry), we are now getting to the heart of the demonstration activities, which will include the assessment of environmental and socio-economic impacts.

The HyCool System indeed will result in relevant benefits on the environment and the human health, as well as in important economic benefits thanks to energy consumption reduction (estimated in 75%) and operational GHG emissions reduction.

In particular, the assessment of environmental and socio-economic impacts aims to analyse, evaluate, understand and manage the environmental and health effects of the HyCool technologies and solutions, with particular reference to the Global Warming Potential (GWP), with the quantification of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions considering the entire life up to the point of disposal.

The activities will be performed in the framework of Work Package 7, led by the partner CiaoTech srl (Italy), a consulting company specialised in innovation management.

Since the assessments are conducted with a comparative methodology, as a first step, we have identified and analysed the reference process, with most industrial cooling and refrigeration systems worldwide powered by electricity and employing big electrically driven vapor compression machines. Secondly, we have defined the main environmental parameters and indicators to be monitored during the assessments.

In the coming months, we will carefully and thoroughly analyse the HyCool technologies and system, first of all from the environmental point of view, taking into account all the phases of the life cycle as per ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards (Figure 2). This analysis is known as Life Cycle Assessment or LCA.

Figure 2. Generic illustration of LCA study approach

Thus, the LCA will allow us to quantify all inputs (resources and energy) and outputs (pollutants and wastes) of the solar cooling systems and assessing how these solar cooling systems affect the environment, by demonstrating the benefits of the HyCool System in comparison with the heating and cooling processes currently used in the industry.

We will then analyse the economic impacts of the developed innovative technologies by comparing them against the conventional practice with a view to demonstrate significant reduction in human labour intensity and cost, but also reduction in operating expenditures incurred by energy, water and material consumption.

Finally, the assessment will focus on the social impacts that the Hycool solutions will generate on society at large.

These activities will allow us to have a complete picture of the potential impacts deriving from the application of HyCool innovation in the world of industrial refrigeration and to demonstrate that solar heat can become a reliable energy source for greener, more energy-efficient industrial processes.

Written by Luigi Ranza, from CiaoTech

We Have Been Showcased @CORDIS_EU

26 de January de 20214 de September de 2020 by AdminCometPublishing

Our project aiming to increase the use of solar heat in industrial processes has been featured at cordis.europa.eu, the European Commission’s primary source of results, news, and information on EU-funded research projects. The article shows how we are boosting the concept on the cheap and easy-to-install linear Fresnel system, which basically consists of many mirrors in parallel rows, that imitate a large Fresnel Lens, to augment solar energy acquisition. This concentrated solar power system (CSP) is coupled with tailor-made hybrid heat pumps (HHPs) that enable “both industrial heating and cooling powered by the sun” as our project coordinator, Silvia Jané, has explained.

Quoting the article:

“At the Spanish production site of consortium partner Givaudan, a flavors and fragrances company, the HyCool concept has been applied to several processes with either heating or cooling needs. Givaudan’s current cold installation makes use of a glycolic water chiller to keep the water entering the liquid ring of the vacuum pumps at 7 °C, with a thermal demand of 125.5kW. ”For the use cases considered, the electrical consumption of the compression chiller will be reduced by 29 % (spring) and 44 % (summer), respectively, by using HyCool technology,” says Jané This efficiency gain is even higher if compared to common refrigeration systems”.

We are advancing this technology and systems to promote energy efficiency for industries.

Click here to read the whole article

#solarenergy
#EU
#CSP
#HeatPumps

Three Insights on the Development of the Hybrid Heat Pump

26 de January de 20217 de September de 2019 by AdminCometPublishing

The hybrid heat pump constitutes one of the core elements of the HyCool solution for solar cooling in industry and, therefore, its optimal design is crucial to achieving high performance of the overall system. Since the very beginning of the project, the Fahrenheit team has been working on a prototype of the hybrid heat pump with the goal of obtaining highest efficiency while keeping the machine simple and reliable. In the early spring of 2019, the first prototype HyCool XHHP01 was ready for testing. The results of the tests performed by CNR have shown a very good performance of the prototype and have indicated a few areas, which still needed improvement. Currently, the Fahrenheit team is making use of the time left before the installation of the pilot sites to optimize the functionalities of the hybrid heat pump. Three members of the team explain to us the general concept of the hybrid heat pump, how they want to optimize the prototype, and what challenges are still ahead of them.

After the tests at CNR’s premises in Italy, the prototype HyCool XHHP01 came back to Germany, where the Fahrenheit engineers are working on further improvements in the design of the hybrid heat pump.

The hybrid heat pump constitutes one of the core elements of the HyCool solution for solar cooling in industry and, therefore, its optimal design is crucial to achieving high performance of the overall system.

Eliza Nowak, Project Engineer at Fahrenheit GmbH, on the general concept of the hybrid heat pump

The term “hybrid” refers to a combination of two or more interconnected and co-operating heat pumps based on different principles of operation. In our case, the developed prototype consists of an adsorption and a compression heat pump connected in such a way that the evaporator of the adsorption unit cools down the condenser of the compression one. This lowers the condensation temperature below the one resulting from the outdoor conditions. Lower condensation temperature means higher EER (Energy Efficiency Ratio – ratio of the delivered cooling capacity to the consumed electrical power) of the compression chiller. Of course, to make this layout feasible, the savings of the electrical power consumption of the compressor due to higher EER should be higher than the additional power consumption of the adsorption unit and its auxiliaries.

Doreen Acker works on the changes in the control software of the hybrid heat pump.

Doreen Acker, Software Developer at Fahrenheit GmbH, on the prototype optimization

In terms of the control software optimization, we are implementing two changes in the HyCool XHHP01 prototype. The first one is the introduction of a free cooling mode, to allow the use of low external temperatures for cooling of the compression unit’s condenser. In brief, in the free cooling mode the condensation heat of the compression chiller is dissipated directly to the ambient air via the dry cooler. If the outdoor temperatures are low enough to ensure the condensing temperature of the compression chiller as low as or lower than with the use of the adsorption chiller, which happens mostly in winter and during night time, the system will operate more efficiently in the free cooling mode. The operation of the system resembles the standard operation of the compression chiller and saves the electrical power needed to drive the circulating pumps of the adsorption chiller. Thanks to the clever hydraulic connections in the adsorption unit, we can implement this new operation mode through a software update without the need to rebuild anything in hydraulics. The second change is the optimized start-up procedure. After the tests performed by the colleagues from CNR, they suggested that the compression unit should be started when the temperature in the cold water circuit of the adsorption unit reaches a specified threshold. In this way, we will ensure favourable conditions for the operation of the compression unit at all times.

René Weinitschke, After Sales & Factory Service Engineer at Fahrenheit GmbH, on the data logging and Cloud solutions

René Weinitschke is responsible for the implementation of Cloud solutions for data logging.

In order to evaluate the performance of the hybrid heat pump, we have to perform measurements and collect meaningful data. Some of the measurements will be carried out by the main control system based on the sensors installed on the pipelines but there are also quite a few sensors installed inside the prototype. The values from these sensors will not be sent to the main control system; rather we plan to collect them in the Cloud. We have not used this technology so far, but its implementation in our commercial projects is one of our priorities. It will not only help our After Sales services, but also contribute to our technology development. HyCool is a great opportunity for us to test this solution! From the beginning, we have to place great emphasis on the data security, especially because the pilot plants will be installed in “real-life” factories.

According to the current execution plan, the optimized prototype of the hybrid heat pump is going to be delivered to the Bo de Debó demo site in October 2019. After proper installation and commissioning, the operation of the hybrid heat pump will be monitored for 12 consecutive months. Based on the collected data the Fahrenheit team will evaluate its performance. It is expected that due to the optimization measures implemented, the prototype will show even better performance than what was achieved during the first tests at CNR.

Meet the Pilot Sites: Givaudan

26 de January de 20213 de July de 2019 by AdminCometPublishing

Article by Givaudan

By maximising the use of renewable energy through its unique technology, HyCool aims to minimise greenhouses gas emissions. Givaudan, which itself has a target of reducing absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 30% between 2015 and 2030, is proud to host one of the project’s two pilot sites at its Sant Celoni plant. Givaudan spoke to Jorge Vilaseca, local Project Engineer, to get an update.

HyCool Pilot: Givaudan’s Sant Celoni Site

Why did Givaudan decide to participate in this project?

The idea was to test HyCool in at least two industries using significant amounts of cooling in their
processes and Givaudan offers a great profile to host one of the pilot sites as a representative of
the chemical industry. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to participate in this innovative project.
HyCool is particularly attractive to Givaudan for two main reasons. First, our sustainability strategy
A Sense of Tomorrow includes ambitious environmental targets. This project will help us reduce
GHG emissions by a projected 3% for the site and decrease energy consumption in terms of
electricity and gas, helping us towards our goal of 100% renewable electricity by 2025. The
project is totally aligned with our sustainability strategy. Secondly, every Givaudan production
plant needs heating and cooling, and it would be relatively easy to replicate this technology.
HyCool should deliver refrigeration with 25% greater efficiency—this would provide Givaudan a
competitive advantage.

How far along are we in the project?

We have finished the conceptual phase: we have decided where and how to use the cooling
produced, where to install equipment and how to connect it. Now we are looking at detailed
engineering: how to best connect materials, figuring out the best design for the electrical
connections, etc. The one-year installation phase will then start this summer.

What requirements did Sant Celoni have to take into account when planning installation?

One issue was finding a place to install the solar collectors. They require more than 1, 000 m2 of
surface, preferably over a roof. Because of a lack of surface on our buildings, and for safety
reasons, mainly the presence of flammable products, this wasn’t possible, and we had to install
the solar field at ground level. This caused problems such as how to manage shadows of other
buildings that we had to solve.

We also have to comply with all EHS requirements including ensuring a good works plan for
execution. We expect a number of external contractors and companies on site during installation
and we will need to monitor all aspects of their work. We will need to ensure a pre-start safety
review, issue corresponding work permits and make sure we prevent injuries and accidents: we
want to ensure that “Everyone gets Home Safe Everyday”.

Givaudan, which itself has a target of reducing absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 30% between 2015 and 2030, is proud to host one of the project’s two pilot sites at its Sant Celoni plant.

How did consortium partners contribute?

During the initial phase, we worked closely with the equipment companies and engineering and
general contracting partners. This has been a real team effort.

What are the next steps for Givaudan as a pilot site?

The next steps are to finish the installation on time, on budget and safely and then to operate the
machinery and collect data on energy efficiency and ease of use. We have two years of hard work
ahead, but it will be stimulating. As to transferring the technology to other sites – why not? If it is
cost effective, we will be able to use it in countries with even more favourable weather conditions
such as Mexico, South Africa or Singapore.

This interview is also available at Givaudan’s website.

“Experimentally Validated Dynamic Model for a Hybrid Cascade System for Solar Heating and Cooling Applications”

26 de January de 20214 de March de 2019 by AdminCometPublishing

By Valeria Palomba, Andrea Frazzica, Steffen Kühnert, André Große

Istituto di Tecnologie Avanzate per l’Energia CNR-ITAE, Messina (Italy)
Fahrenheit GmbH, Halle (Germany)

Last September our colleagues Valeria Palomba, Andrea Frazzica, Steffen Kühnert and André Große
presented the following paper on Hycool at the Eurosun conference held in Rapperswill:

ABSTRACT
This paper presents the dynamic modelling of a hybrid cascade chiller for solar cooling in industrial applications driven by Fresnel solar thermal collectors. The chiller comprises an adsorption module, which is directly connected to the bottoming vapor compression chiller. This cascade configuration allows enhancing the overall electric COP, since the adsorption module is operated to dissipate the heat rejected by the vapor compression chiller, thus reducing the condensation temperature quite below the ambient temperature. The model was implemented in Dymola/Modelica, allowing describing heat and mass transfer phenomena inside each component. The complete model was then validated against experimental data obtained on a cascade chiller prototype at the CNR ITAE lab. Finally, a reference daily simulation was performed to evaluate the ability of the developed chiller in providing cooling energy to a typical industrial application

Keywords: Dymola/Modelica, cascade chiller, industrial solar cooling

1. Introduction

The cooling demand is continuously growing worldwide in different sectors (Werner, 2016). Particularly, energy consumption and related emissions due to cooling processes in industrial sector are becoming a major issue. For this reason, the integration of renewable thermal energy sources inside industrial sites, for both heating and cooling applications is gaining a lot of attention (Farjana et al., 2018). Usually, it is accomplished with the use of thermally driven sorption machine, driven by thermal energy produced by non-concentrating solar thermal collectors (e.g. flat plate, evacuated tubes) (Murray et al., 2016). Nevertheless, this approach suffers of some weaknesses: first, when renewable source (i.e. solar energy) is not available, a backup system is needed to either operate the sorption chiller (e.g. gas boiler) or to directly produce cooling by means of standard technology (e.g. vapour compression chiller).
Secondly, the use of non-concentrating solar thermal collectors technologies often is not sufficient to properly drive the sorption machine, thus making it work under off-design conditions for several hours. Furthermore, these solar thermal collectors cannot be integrated as heating source in most of the industrial sites, since the achievable temperature level is usually not sufficient drive any process.

In such a background, the EU co-funded project HyCool (HyCool, 2018) aims at increasing the use of solar heat in industrial processes, integrating a concentrating Fresnel solar thermal collector technology, with a hybrid cascade chiller, to increase the share of renewable sources for heating and cooling applications in industries.

The present paper deals with the development of a numerical model, implemented in Dymola/Modelica, for the simulation of the innovative cascade chiller. The model describe heat and mass transfer phenomena in each component of the chiller, in order to accurately simulate its operation. Furthermore, it has been validated by means of experimental data measured at the CNR ITAE lab and it will be further used to evaluate optimal operating conditions and management strategies under typical working boundaries of an industrial plant.

2. The Hybrid cascade chiller

The hybrid heat pump is made up of two units, working in cascade mode: a thermal unit and an electric unit. The thermal unit is an adsorption chiller, based on the system already commercialised by Fahrenheit, which will be driven by the heat produced by a field of Fresnel solar thermal collectors, for the production of chilled water in the range of 16-22°C. This unit is hydraulically connected to the condenser of an electric vapour compression unit (i.e. cascading mode), which will provide chilled water to the user. In such a way, the adsorption unit is primarily meant for dissipating the condensation heat of the vapour compression unit. This operation allows increasing the overall electric COP, by reducing the temperature lift between evaporator and condenser of the vapour compression unit, thus limiting the compressor work.

Furthermore, the utilization of the cascading operation of the two units allows exploiting the benefits of the two types of systems, i.e. the low primary energy consumption of the thermal unit, which will be fed by renewable solar energy, and the fast response and good temperature control under different conditions of the electric unit (Vasta et al., 2018). A schematic of the hybrid heat pump operation and components as well as the different temperature levels is reported in Figure 1.

3. Dynamic modeling and validation

As shown in Figure 1, the hybrid heat pump is realized by hydraulically connecting the thermal and electric units. Consequently, the models for the two units were implemented and tested separately and then the overall model for the system was assembled and calibrated. […]