A new twist on the traditional Rankine cycle could provide a major advantage for concentrated solar power (CSP)

projects by
increasing electrical output, considerably reducing water consumption and water treatment, and by cutting operational and
capital costs.
In order to understand the hygroscopic cycle, it must be said the concept has been matured by specialists in refrigeration
engines and absorption chillers. In these cycles, a refrigerant is vaporised and absorbed by a hygroscopic fluid, lowering its
partial pressure, and allowing more liquid to evaporate.
In the case of energy systems like CSP, the fluid being absorbed is the steam leaving the steam turbine. The effect is the
same, the hygroscopic fluid contacting the steam allows a low pressure of the exhaust steam, below 0.08 bar(a), or even up
to 0.01 bar(a). This lower pressure improves the differential pressure through the steam turbine, increasing its electrical
output, compared to the traditional Rankine cycle.
This absorption takes place in the absorber-condenser. Here the steam comes in contact with a highly concentrated solution
of water and hygroscopic salts (salts which absorb moisture such as NaCl, CaCl2, NaOH, CuSO4, LiCl) coming from the
boiler after having been cooled down. The molecules of steam are trapped by the hygroscopic salts where they are
condensed. The steam condensation temperature is higher (between 1 and 30 C) than in a traditional Rankine cycle
condenser. This can be seen by adding regular salt to water, which increases the boiling point, and decreases the freezing
point.
Some salts show an endothermic effect when they are diluted (such as NaNO3). This means the condensation heat
decreases in the absorber. The overall effect of this, in particular for CSP plants, is by using particular salts and dry cooling
(through air coolers), the performance of the turbine could be kept high even in hot days (when market demand for energy is
very high), and given the small size of the air-cooler needed, the overall power consumption of the plant would be lower. In
this cycle the air is used to cool the concentrated solution (liquid phase) that goes towards the absorber.
After condensation, the mixture is pumped and split into two. The major part is recycled back to the absorber condenser,
after being mixed with a concentrated hygroscopic flow and passed through the air-cooler. The lesser part goes through a
heat recovery exchanger, where it is partly pre-heated, after which the fluid is degasified and pumped at high pressure into
the boiler or source of heat.
The latter could be any conventional source of heat, although in the case of solar troughs or conventional fresnel systems,
this would be hot mineral oil, or molten salts for solar towers, or the salts found in thermal storage devices in order to
produce electricity for 24 hours.
As the fluid is heated in the boiler, it starts to vaporise, as in a traditional boiler, but at a higher temperature, due to the
colligative effects of the salt explained earlier. As steam is being generated, the salts are being desorbed by the effect of
heat, and concentrated at the bottom of the boiler. The droplets of the generated steam are eliminated by a demister, and
the steam is superheated before passing through the steam turbine and generating electricity.

The hot concentrated hygroscopic mixture is recovered at the base of the boiler where it is cooled down partly in the
aforementioned heat exchanger, and mixed with the return to the absorber (where it is further cooled down in the air-cooler
mentioned earlier).
The benefits in action
The following is an example where the performance of a solar thermoelectric plant with cylindrical-parabolic collector
technology located in the southwest of Spain, is compared to a similar plant using the Hygroscopic cycle technology instead
of the Rankine cycle. We will maintain the same values of the steam conditions (pressure and temperature) at the inlet and
outlet of the turbine.
The power of the plant is 50MWe using a conventional Rankine cycle and wet cooling (by means of cooling towers). Using a
commercial Hygroscopic cycle the following results could be easily achieved:
o

Saving an estimated 80% as a minimum in water consumption 500,000m3 of water per year;

500k We more electrical power (around 1000MWh per year);

An estimated reduction of 2mn in installation costs. and a 50% cut in operating and maintenance costs;

Less environmental impact.

So the main advantages are an increase of electrical power output and less dependency on ambient conditions for cooling,
even with dry cooling, allowing for good performance of the turbine. By using dry cooling there is a saving in operational cost
(eg reduction in cooling water add-up, no need for chemical water treatment, lower water discharge in the Rankine section).
The hygroscopic cycle could also be used in cogeneration plants, biomass plants, and so o

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AN EVOLUTION IN PROFITABILITY AND EFFICIENCY

03/10/2013

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A relative simple improvement to the Rankine cycle can boost plant performance and
lower operating and maintenance costs, explainsFrancisco Javier Rubio of Spanish
engineering company IMASA.
One of the major concerns of nations worldwide is how to deal with the continuing rising
cost of traditional electric energy sources.
In a market economy, the industry has worked hard to provide innovative solutions to
supply constraints. This has led the industry to invest heavily in order to increase
efficiency and seek new sources of energy.
The future energy needs of the world population can be estimated relatively accurately,
but it is more difficult to qualify and quantify the future sources of this energy. According
to best estimates, a large portion will come from the transformation of solar energy into
electricity and the use of other renewable sources. However, these sources are still
dependent on timing and seasonality during which they can lie idle, so the industry has
turned to the solution of uniting old technologies with new to overcome these serious
deficiencies.
Among the older technologies commonly used in conventional thermal and nuclear
plants is the Rankine cycle or steam cycle. The performance of this cycle has been
improved considerably over the past 100 years and now it is set for a further substantial
improvement, not only in efficiency but on other issues of interest to the energy
industry.
A new Rankine cycle technology has been developed by IMASA, a Spanish multinational
engineering and projects company. IMASA exclusively holds the rigths to this
technology, and is planning multiple applications in biomass-fuelled plants, as well as in
the solar thermal field.
The Rankine cycle is a thermodynamic cycle which transforms heat into work.Although
its effectiveness is limited by the thermodynamic efficiency of a Carnot cycle operating

between two heat reservoirs, the main advantage of the Rankine cycle is its industrial
maturity, benefiting from a long and continuous development, and its high degree of
applicability in different processes.
Improvements have been achieved mainly by increasing the temperature difference
between the cold and hot sinks, resulting from the evolution of materials that are able
to sustain increasingly restrictive conditions - up to supercritical water conditions.
Also, thanks to the improvement of thermal and mechanical designs, engineers have
been able to design condensers with very low pressure at the exit of the turbine, down
to or below 0.1 bar. This has helped increase the electrical efficiency of the cycle.
Other improvements have included a more integrated heat recovery in the boiler, using
it to superheat or reheat steam, or using a bleed stream of the turbine to preheat the
feedwater to the boiler (regeneration). In some cases, binary cycles have been
introduced, where two cycles in series operate at different temperatures, as well as the
Organic Rankine cycle, which, uses an organic fluid rather than water. The latest
technologies have used modern CFD tools to develop turbines and more sophisticated
equipment with a higher performance and lower maintenance.
At present, water availability and use of cooling towers are the Achilles' heel of Rankine
cycles. Water as a commodity is becoming ever more scarce and therefore expensive.
Take, for example, the water limitations in the areas suitable for solar thermal power
plants with high levels of annual sunshine. These conditions are detrimental to
optimising the condensation pressure at the exit of the turbine and therefore lowers the
power outputs. These factors heavily penalise the performance of the cycle and will
compromise the viability and success of such a project.

e configuration of the novel Hygroscopic cycle enables an absorber to be used as a condensor, which has a cost bene
Furthermore, even when water is available and affordable, the use of cooling towers
leads to increasing operating costs, adding water treatment (use of chemical additives)
and environmental hazards, such as the growing problem of legionella. This results in a
situation where it is difficult or impractical to install these cycles using wet cooling.
There is always the air-cooled condenser (condensation of water vapour by indirect
contact with ambient air) that could potentially solve part of the problem, but both its
price and the required space and power consumption makes this option both
unprofitable and unattractive in most cases.
Finding a solution to all these problems is where there is room for improvement. A
Spanish team of researchers, led by myself, has come up with a simple solution that we
believe has multiple advantages in terms of space, operating and maintenance costs,
performance, and most interestingly, a lower investment cost. The solution is the
Hygroscopic cycle. This evolution of the Rankine cycle works essentially with
hygroscopic compounds that improve the conditions for condensing vapour at the outlet
of the turbine.
The Hygroscopic cycle uses the physical and chemical principles of the absorption cycle
machines to provide higher performance and better cooling in an efficient Rankine cycle
system. Knowledge and experience with hygroscopic compounds has been the
motivation behind this development and international experts from leading institutes
have given their backing to this invention.
Hygroscopic compounds are compounds which have a high avidity for the water in
vapour form. These are generally salts (e.g. LiBr, NaCl, Na2SO4 to name a few) that are
sometimes already present in low concentrations in regular water supplies. These
compounds are not volatile, toxic or flammable - rather the opposite: they are stable,
abundant and cheap.
Depending on their nature and concentration, they all share - to a greater or lesser
extent - their dissolution abilities to water, with the benefit of increasing the
condensation temperatures. The simplest example is found in the increase in the boiling
point of water when mixed with small amounts of salt. Through absorption with
hygroscopic compounds, lower pressures can be achieved at the outlet of the turbine by
cooling this steam with water at higher temperatures than in a conventional
Hygroscopic cycle. This immediately leads to lower cooling duties for the condensing
water used in the condenser. In fact, a careful selection of compounds with high
hygroscopic endothermic heat of dilution (e.g. KNO3 and NaNO3) substantially decreases
part of the condensation energy in the absorber.
To exploit this effect to the fullest and reduce even further the cooling water
consumption, air coolers could be installed, in order to dissipate the remaining energy.

The Hygroscopic cycle benefits from a clever configuration, such that it allows the
traditional condenser, or the air condenser, to be replaced by an absorber where the
hygroscopic salts come into contact with the steam turbine output.
The configuration of the cycle using the absorber as a condenser has numerous
advantages over the traditional condenser. The first is the cost, as it can be up to four
times cheaper than traditional condensers. It occupies much less space (reduced cost of
civil works), the pressure drop is negligible (less need to sub-cool the steam) and
operating costs are also significantly lower.
Depending on the concentration of the hygroscopic compound chosen, greater or lesser
efficiency is obtained, since it can work with lower condensing pressure without the
ambient conditions limiting the cold sink. This optimisation results in an increase in
electricity production of between 1 per cent and 5 per cent when compared with a
current Rankine cycle with identical ambient conditions conditions (cold sink).
It is therefore a significant step in the evolution and implementation of Rankine cycles.
The Hygroscopic cycle has enormous potential for development and innovation as future
hygroscopic compounds are being developed, enriching the already large family they
represent.
The Hygroscopic cycle has many similarities to the Rankine cycle, but especially
noteworthy is the fact that you can apply the same improvements in the conventional
cycle already introduced above and achieve even more from the latter, with the
advantage of having better cooling conditions.
Often in engineering, efficiency gains are linked to the higher cost of equipment, largely
due to the refined materials and manufacturing technology used. However, compared to
current Rankine cycles, it can be stated that for low concentrations of salt or
hygroscopic compounds, an immediate increase of up to 1 per cent more electricity is
obtained.
Most importantly, a global reduction of over 90 per cent of the plant water consumption
is achieved, together with lower operating costs and with an initial investment similar or
lower than a conventional Rankine cycle. A thorough study of the plant has concluded
that for these concentrations, conventional and commercial equipment could be used,
keeping the costs down, and the manufacturers guarantee.
Certainly a higher salt concentration implies a higher cost of equipment, but the
increase in cycle efficiency largely compensates for this increase, thus reducing payback This point is key when marketing the cycle since for similar investments the
Hygroscopic cycle is more competitive, profitable and with the same reliability and
warranty as traditional Rankine cycles.
This technology is immediately applicable to combined-cycle, solar thermal, nuclear and
biomass combustion plants, as well as coal-fired plants. Furthermore, by increasing the

condensation temperature, it enables it to be used in cogeneration plants for heat

recovery, further expanding its scope and future potential.
To demonstrate the real potential of this cycle, we highlight a real-life example of a
recent investment, in order to compare its performance and competitive investment.
The benchmark is a newly-installed biomass-fired plant, with a power output of 15 MW.
This plant has an availability of 86 per cent or an equivalent of 7500 hours/year, with a
net electrical efficiency of 27 per cent using a traditional Rankine cycle with the latest
optimisations.
One of the problems that this plant faces is water scarcity and continuous health
inspections in order to avoid the problem of legionella in the cooling towers. Therefore,
in the absence of water, the condensation pressure of the steam turbine output is
limited, and thus the cycle efficiency limited.
In this particular case, the equivalent and competing Hygroscopic cycle has the
potential to release the cold sink limit of the cycle and increase its performance at a
lower cost. To start with, the Hygroscopic cycle does not require cooling towers or air
condensers. It would instead be enough to install an air cooler that will dissipate the
heat of condensation of the steam produced in the absorber.

e cost of the Hygroscopic cycle has been estmated to be 5 per cent less than a conventional Rankine cycle
It is conservatively estimated that the total investment cost of this cycle is around 5 per
cent less than the current Rankine cycle. It can even ensure a net increase of 1 per cent
in yield, which corresponds in this case to an additional 150 kW net, since autoconsumption does not increase with this cycle. As for annual savings of water and

additives for this plant, it is estimated at 400,000 m3 of water consumption in the

cooling towers, and more than 10 m3 of chemical additives (NaClO, biocide and antifouling) per year. In comparison, the annual water consumption of the existing plant is
the equivalent to 160 Olympic swimming pools and could supply more than 7000 people
a year for a normal daily consumption of 150 litres of water per person.
In addition, over time the cost of industrial water is expected to increase, and this year
it is estimated to reach an average cost of 2/m3($2.7/m3). Applying these figures will
achieve a saving of 800,000 per year in make-up water. Cooling towers are not only
expensive in terms of water consumption, but they also have chemical additives,
operating and maintenance costs, and have to undergo constant inspections for
legionella.
As for the net increase in economic benefits, the cycle has a net electrical output of
1125 MWh/year, representing an annual income of 135,000.
So we can conclude that for this biomass plant, the use of the Hygroscopic cycle instead
of a traditional Rankine cycle would result in a 1 million net profit over a year. We
should also remember that we are starting from a lower investment. Thus the
investment will have a much higher rate of return, and a much lower environmental
impact, keeping the same safety and reliability standards as in a conventional biomass
plant. It is worth noting that in thermal plants, these profits could be slightly higher,
since the best locations for the plant often corresponds to marginal/desert areas where
the absence of water is a problem.
These values reflect the competitiveness of the investment associated with the
Hygroscopic cycle, and the team of experts responsible for this new technology are
eager to introduce this cycle to the industry.