The Gas Technology Institute (GTI), Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and General Electric Global Research (GE-GR) are executing the "STEP" [Supercritical Transformational Electric Power] project, to design, construct, commission, and operate an integrated and reconfigurable 10 MWe sCO2 Pilot Plant Test Facility.&nbsp; Teh $122 million project is funded $84 million by the US DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL Award Number DE-FE0028979) and $38 million by teh team members, component suppliers and others interested in sCO2 technology.&nbsp; The facilty is currently under construction an dis located at SwRI's San Antonio, Texas, USA campus.&nbsp; The project is a significant step toward sCO2 cycle based power generation commercialization and is informing the performance, operability, and scale-up to commercial plants.Supercritical CO2 (sCO2) power cycles are Brayton cycles that utilize supercritical CO2 working fluid to convert heat to power.&nbsp; They offer the potential for higher system efficiencies than other energy conversion technologies such as steam Rankine or Organic Rankine cycles especially when operating at elevated temperatures.&nbsp; sCO2 power cycles are being considered for a wide range of applications including fossil-fired systems, waste heat recovery, concentrated solar power, and nuclear power generation.&nbsp; By the end of this 6-year STEP pilot demo project, teh operability of the sCO2 power cycle will be demonstrated and documented starting with facility comissioning as a simple closed recuperated cycle configuration initially operating at 500 C (932 F) turbine inlet temperature and progressing to a recompression closed Brayton cycle technology (RCBC) configuration operating at 715 C (1319 C).Significant progress has been made on this STEP project.&nbsp; The design phase is complete (Phase 1) and included procurment of long-lead time delivery components.&nbsp; Now well into Phase 2, a ground-breaking was held in October of 2018, and civil work and the construction of a dedicated 25,000 ft2 building is complete. Most major equipment is in fabrication or delivered to site.&nbsp; These efforts have already provided valuable project learnings for technology commercialization.&nbsp; At the time of paper presentation, equipment will have been received, installed, and commissioning should have begun.&nbsp; Plans for testing will be ready to share and modeling results to inform operations will be explained.

The STEP 10 MWe sCO2 Pilot Plant Demonstration Status Update

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/GT/GT2021/volume/84898

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