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Altex Technologies Corp. (Altex) and project team partners—Dresser-Rand(D-R), Echogen, and Babcock & Wilcox (B&W)—will develop, design, and build a 500 kilowatt (kW) High Effectiveness Low Cost (HELC) Recuperative Heat Exchanger (RHEX) for supercritical carbon dioxide (SCO2) waste heat power systems. Altex will build and test coupons as well as deliver an available 30 kW HELC in a SCO2 laboratory test system at Echogen. Echogen will test the unit and provide data and feedback to the team. Using the smaller scale (coupon and 30 kW articles) test results and analyses, and B&W inputs on materials selection, Altex will develop and design a 500 kW unit for testing, and use ISO and ASA certified manufacturers to fabricate and bond the unit. After quality checking the integrity of the unit, it will be installed in Echogen's 250 kW demonstrator power system and tested by Echogen under the power system operating conditions of interest. Using the test data and analysis, the performance and economic benefits of HELC will be determined by Altex. Finally, D-R and Altex will develop a transition plan to support the commercialization of HELC RHEX. Altex has developed HELC under previous DOE contract DE-EE0004541.
Altex has identified and is developing the HELC RHEX that has the needed performance, footprint, and cost parameters to satisfy the SCO2 system RHEX pressure, temperature, and heat transfer requirements. While preliminary, implementation of HELC-equipped SCO2 waste heat power systems are predicted to reduce fuel use by 0.25 quadrillion Btu, fuel cost by $1 billion, greenhouse gas emissions by 6.36 million tons, sulfur emissions by 1.1 million pounds, and NOx emissions by 19.0 million pounds by displacing fossil fuel plant electricity production. A prior bottom-up cost estimate indicated that the HELC design could achieve performance specifications while reducing manufacturing and material costs by 60 percent relative to conventional RHEXs to achieve the DOE cost target of $30/kW. Moreover, the high pressure, high temperature and low cost characteristics of HELC have applications beyond waste heat power generation, and can provide benefits to the concentrating solar, geothermal, nuclear, and advanced fossil fuel power generation industries.