We attended our 6th General Assembly online!

Last 12 May 2031, the HyCool consortium held its 6th Virtual General Assembly! Organised as an intense half-day session, this meeting gathered 26 partners online in order to review and discuss project advances with regards to our Solar Heating technologies for Industrial settings. Work package leaders were able to present the progress made with the core technologies, demonstration activities, exploitation, communication, and coordination work packages.

The session started with project coordinator Veolia welcoming us and reviewing the status of the project management work package. After this dive into the more administrative side of the project, we stepped right into the technical workpackages: Empa was able to present the status of their work on the adsorption material characterization protocol and  behavior model while Ecotherm presented an update on the energy management system that will soon be installed in both our pilots. Then Veolia updated us on the adavances of the civil works and installations that are ongoing at our two pilot sites, like the recent installation of the anchors at the Givaudan pilot site, for example.

After the more technical presentations, it was time for work packages 7, 8 and 9 that are in charge of environmental and socio-economical analysis, exploitation and communication activities. Highlights presented during these work packages include the ongoing LCA Analysis and our upcoming WSED Workshop with the collaboration of AIT, Ecotherm, Fahrenheit, CNR ITAE and R2M. From the communication standpoint several new materials where presented, including the new Ressource on SHIP page which aims to foster knowledge exchange and synergies with other sister projects and organisations working on promoting the use of Solar Thermal.

The meeting wrapped up with high hopes that next time we might meet again in person and with a clear view of the next steps that will be taken by all partners during the next 6 months.

How Much More Efficient Can Your Process Get?

HyCool’s technology helps industrial processes to achieve higher refrigeration efficiency by integrating solar heat with hybrid heat pump technology. The performance of a hybrid adsorption-compression cooling system mainly depends on the operation parameters of the process. We have developed a “Refrigeration Capacity and EER Calculator Tool” that helps you estimate the performance of hybrid heat pump technology based on hot water temperature, chilled water temperature, and dry cooler outlet temperature.

You can try it out! Click here!

HyCool Participated at SP2020

On Thursday 29th October, at the virtual Sustainable Places 2020 (SP2020) conference, Prof. Dr. Uli Jakob, from project partner Dr. Jakob Energy Research; presented HyCool at the “Renewable Heating and Cooling Solutions for Buildings and Industry Workshop”.

During this online encounter, a selection of fifteen H2020 EU-funded projects gathered experts from the biomass, geothermal, solar thermal and heat pump sectors to explore a shared strategy to expand the use of renewable energy technology for building and industrial heating and cooling processes.

These technologies offer efficient and increasingly cost-competitive solutions to energy consumption.

Figure 1. Banner for “Renewable Heating and Cooling Solutions for Buildings and Industry Workshop” at SP2020.

In the course of the workshop, the projects were grouped into four categories according to their focus: (1) RHC for industrial applications; (2) storage solutions for RHC building support; (3) innovative solutions for RHC building deployment; (4) demonstration actions for RHC in buildings.

HyCool’s Presentation

Within the first cluster reviewing Renewable Heating and Cooling (RHC) for industries, Dr. Jakob offered a view of HyCool’s mission to increase the use of solar heat in industrial processes. For instance, HyCool’s solution combines solar collectors with adsorption chillers, that use solar energy to produce steam, heating, and cooling energy with greater efficiency.

Figure 2. Slide from Dr. Jakob’s presentation at SP2020.

Furthermore, Dr. Jakob’s shared the key equipment composing HyCool’s innovation and how it will be tested on the two pilot sites where HyCool will use the latest available developments in both concentrated solar panels and thermal storage fields to develop two innovative hybrid solar system concepts: one for chemical industrial processes primarily meant for solar steam and cooling energy provision and one for the small food industry primarily meant for solar cooling production.

Figure 3. Slide from Dr. Jakob’s presentation at SP2020.

In addition, Dr. Jakob showed how the HyCool’s Pre-feasibility Simulator can enable users to evaluate whether or not HyCool’s technology is suitable for a given industrial cooling process.

More About the Workshop

In conclusion, to further support the increase in the share of renewable energy across the EU, the production and validation of RHC solutions are of primary importance. The numerous fields of application in which innovative RHC technologies are proposed and currently investigated to demonstrate the relevance of this subject. Their performance and reliability must be demonstrated in order to achieve large distribution, because one of the key obstacles is the reluctance of industrial firms to implement new technologies, which can cause problems in production processes.

What seems necessary is to continue and improve cooperation between EU partners in order to take advantage of the expertise gained and to explore the social obstacles to the implementation of these solutions.

Learn about this workshop’s participating projectSWS-Heating – HYBUILD – CREATE – TRI-HP – GEOFIT – SHIP2FAIR – SUNHORIZON – Heat4Cool – GEOFIT – SCORES – Innova microSolar – Hybrid BioVGE – RES4BUILD – SolBioRev – FRIENDSHIP

Chair of the workshop: Andrea Frazzica (CNR ITAE) – partner of GEOFIT

Participating European Commission representatives: Olga RIO-SUAREZ, Policy Officer, DG Research & Innovation; and Eleftherios Bourdakis, Policy Officer, DG Research & Innovation.

Sources

Link to Proceedings: Renewable Heating and Cooling Solutions for Buildings and Industry

D9.5 Public Communication Materials

Executive summary

This document (D9.5) contains the set of HYCOOL public communication materials established for M6. As the corporate identity with the HYCOOL logo was already included in the HYCOOL Dissemination and exploitation strategic plan (D9.3, M3) and the HYCOOL website was also previously launched and described in deliverable D9.4 (HYCOOL Public website), the communication materials included here are as follows: the project presentation, the posters, the brochure, the newsletter, the presentation video, and the social media.

 

D9.2 Workshop Series

Executive summary

This deliverable (D9.2) is the main document describing in detail the series of workshops related to the HyCool Stakeholder Workshop task (T9.2). The four workshops with the stakeholders involved in HyCool will serve as the basis for the development of the set of needs and market analysis (T8.3). Two of them will be planned, hosted, and executed by the partners providing the demo sites. The other two workshops will be strategically timed to facilitate a more targeted stakeholder integration, taking place in large renewable energy events and focusing on specific topics to maximize outreach and impact. Workshops will be overseen by the Work Package leader Comet to ensure consistency and quality and to integrate outputs into the market analysis report.

D.3.4 Design review of the hybrid heat pump

Executive Summary

This document is the deliverable “D3.4 – Design review of the hybrid heat pump” in the European project “HYCOOL – Industrial Cooling through Hybrid system based on Solar Heat” (hereinafter also referred to as “HYCOOL”, project reference: 792073). HyCool Project Mission is increasing the current use of Solar Heat in Industry Processes, and to do so the project proposes the coupling of a new Fresnel CSP Solar thermal collectors (FCSP) system with specially build Hybrid Heat Pumps (HHP) (a “two in one” combination of adsorption and compressor-based heat pumps) for a wider output temperature range (Solar Heating & Cooling –SHC-), and a wide range of design and operational configurations to increase the potential implementation of the proposed Solar Heat in industrial environments. The solutions encompassed in the project will be implemented and tested in operational processes in two different pilot cases in the food and chemical industry. The food case pilot is hosted by Bo de Deb. which represents a small food industry in a high solar irradiation area with cooling needs in the production processes. Here the industrial cold installation is necessary for the good preservation of the product. The chemical case pilot targets industries with several processes in high solar irradiation areas with steam and cooling needs. This pilot is hosted by Givaudan where the cold installation makes use of a brine chiller to keep the water entering the liquid ring of the vacuum pumps at 7.C.

The purpose of this deliverable is to describe the key findings of the review process, which focuses on the design of the Hybrid Heat Pump. This report contains the findings with regard to control strategy, the interconnection of the heat pumps, selection of the suitable adsorbent and refrigerant, as well as an optimal size of the HHP.

D.3.3 Experimental characterization of the hybrid heat pump module

Executive Summary

This document is the Deliverable “D3.3 – Experimental characterization of the hybrid heat pump module ” of the European project “HYCOOL – Industrial Cooling through Hybrid system based on Solar Heat.” (hereinafter also referred to as “HYCOOL”, project reference: 792073).

This deliverable reports about the experimental performance evaluation of the hybrid cascading chiller under lab-controlled working conditions. The chiller was manufactured by Fahrenheit by connecting in cascade a silica-gel water adsorption cooling machine with a vapour compression chiller using R1270 (propylene) as refrigerant.

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