The starting point of ORC-PLUS project is the CSP plant located at Green Energy park of IRESEN in Benguerir, Morocco. This plant is composed by a solar field of FRESNEL solar collectors, using a thermal oil as Heat Transfer Fluid , and Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power block coupled with an aircooler. Compared to this initial status of this plant, ORC-PLUS project , developing an optimized combination of innovative units of TES and engineering tools specialized for this kind of plants, aims to increase up to 4 hours the power production of the plant during sunless hours ensuring competitive production costs with the target market
the ORC-PLUS consortium, to achieve the goal of the project, has analysed two different TES thermocline systems at a prototype level, where the first TES system utilises a mixture of salts melting at low temperature as Heat Storage Material (HSM), and the second one uses magnetite pebbles and oil as HSM + Heat Transfer Fluid (HTF)
At the end of the second period time the ORC-PLUS consortium has presented his economic evaluation about the comparison of the two aforesaid TES technologies, which provided evidence that the solution based on thermocline oil + magnetite pebbles is cheaper than the solution based on thermocline with low temperature melting salts. This difference is due in part by the lesser cost of the magnetite material, and in part by the different quantity of HSM (the solution based on the molten salts is disadvantaged by the max operative temperature of the HTF employed in the solar field).
In the end of November 2017 the ORC-PLUS consortium was completed the final design of the pilot TES system elaborated on the base of the main outcomes performed in the framework of the WP2 (developing of simulation models); WP3 (material characterization analysis), WP4 (design and realization of the trial TES system).
This action has been accompanied by an in-depth analysis of risk assessment to identify the potential risks that could contribute to the failure of the Project. The approach followed during the analysis of risk assessment was to use the project ongoing as test case to outline the more important particularities of innovative solar thermodynamic energy projects like ORC-PLUS plant.
On site it was completed the installation of the Fresnel solar collector of the solar field of the ORC-PLUS project .
According to the project, CIC has realized a trial TES prototype in scale size of 1/100 with oil and FSMs (magnetite) and completed the experimental tests of characterization of the system. In parallel, F-ISE has completed the tests on his experimental mock up. The F-ISE experimental mock up is a molten salts thermocline system without internal heat exchanger, designed to show the effect of inserting a heat exchanger in a single-tank system and to contribute, with the experimental results, to the model validation of the TES system based on the molten salts. ENEA have completed the construction of their prototypes dedicated at analysis of the behaviour of an innovative oil heat exchangers specialized for the thermocline TES system with low melting molten salts.
At end of October 2019 They have been completed the construction and the cold commissioning of the TES pilot plant at Green Energy Park (Ben Guerir - Morocco)
