Aim
The main goal of the project is the design of a highly flexible and reliable steam generator for solar tower power (STP) plants through numerical simulations validated with experimental results. Current SPT plants have mostly been designed for base load operation and have long startup times running as base load plants. Therefore, issues will grow significatively for the next generation of SPTs if the same designs of high temperature equipment are used.
The increased demand of high operational flexibility is due to the elevated penetration of low-cost variable renewable energies (PV and wind). If the STP plant flexibility rises, they could participate in the adjustment market of energy improving their returns. The proposed design consists of a coil-wound once-through steam generator, which presents a high flexibility and robustness due to its key features: i) the steam drum, which due to its thick-wall suffers from high thermal stress during fast transient responses, is removed improving the ramp rates, ii) the number of tube-to-tubesheet joints, highly susceptible of failure, can be significantly reduced, iii) the helical tubes enhance the heat transfer while their spring-like behavior provides high capacity to absorb thermal shocks.
Research group
The personnel of the project comprise researchers of the Energy Systems Engineering (ISE) research group within the Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M). In particular, the following researchers are working in the CoWoSOL project:
People
The following researchers are working in the CoWoSOL project:
Domingo José Santana Santana
Project coordinator in charge of the Experimental work package
Full Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Domingo José Santana Santana
Project coordinator in charge of the Experimental work package
Full Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Biography: Domingo Santana studied at the Universidad de La Laguna where he obtained a degree in Mathematics in 1994. After finishing his studies, he got a scholarship for the Spanish Government and moved as research assistant to the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria where he obtained his Master in Energy and Environmental and PhD in Chemical Engineering. His thesis concerned the modeling and design of fluidized bed aerosol generators. He received the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria the outstanding PhD dissertation award in the areas of Architecture and Engineering for theses defended in 1999. Since then, he has been a faculty member at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where in 2017 he was promoted to full professor in the Department of Thermal and Fluid Engineering. His research activities involve the study of the Solid-Gas Systems and Renewable Energies.
Pedro Ángel González Gómez
Project coordinator in charge of WP the numerical work package
Associate Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Pedro Ángel González Gómez
Project coordinator in charge of WP the numerical work package
Associate Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Biography: Degree in Mechanical Engineering (University of Castilla-La Mancha), Master in Industrial Engineering (University Carlos III of Madrid), Master in Industrial Mechanics (University Carlos III of Madrid) and PhD in Mechanical Engineering (University Carlos III of Madrid). His main research interests are focused on heat transfer, thermal stress and fatigue-creep analyses of critical components of concentrating solar power plants as steam generators or solar central receivers. Other research interests are exergetic, exergoeconomic and transient analyses of thermal power plants. Pedro Ángel González Gómez is associate professor at the Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering in the University Carlos III of Madrid. He has been working in the research and teaching activities in that institution since 2014.
Antonio Acosta Iborra
Full Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Antonio Acosta Iborra
Full Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Biography: PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Organization (2004, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid). and MSc in Industrial Engineering (2000, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid). He has been teaching and researching at the Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering of UC3M for more than 20 years. His research is currently focused on the Solar Energy in general, including the analysis and thermo-structural modelling of tubular receivers of SPT plants in particular, and the numerical simulation of heat and mass transfer processes of industrial interest. Since 2021 he is full professor at Carlos III University of Madrid.
María de los Reyes Rodríguez Sánchez
Associate Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
María de los Reyes Rodríguez Sánchez
Associate Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Celia Sobrino Fernández
Associate Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Celia Sobrino Fernández
Associate Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Biography: Celia Sobrino is an associate professor in the Thermal and Fluids Engineering Department at UC3M. She received a doctorate in engineering in 2008 and held a postdoc position at TU Delft. Her PhD thesis focused on the hydrodynamics of fluidized beds. After the PhD she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at TU Delft in an EU project led by the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands related to biomass combustion. Her current research lines are concentrating solar energy, thermal energy storage, and heat transfer. She has supervised two PhD thesis and is currently supervising an industrial doctorate focused on 3D printed heat pipes, a PhD thesis on novel materials to be used under high temperature and extreme conditions and a PhD on molten salt receivers in the framework of the TOPCSP project (HORIZON MSCA Doctoral Network).
María Fernández Torrijos
Visiting Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
María Fernández Torrijos
Visiting Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Biography: María Fernández Torrijos has a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Organization from Carlos III University of Madrid (2019). She is currently a visiting professor in the department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering of said university. He has published 16 research articles in the field of solar energy and heat transfer in prestigious international journals, and has 15 contributions to international conferences related to solar energy and heat transfer. In addition, he has carried out two international research stays, one of 3 months at Sandia National Laboratories (USA), and another of 6 months at DLR (Germany).
Marta Laporte Azcue
Assistant Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Marta Laporte Azcue
Assistant Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Biography: Marta studied at the Universidad de Cantabria, where she obtained a BSc in Industrial Engineering in 2015 with the best student record. She then obtained a MSc in Industrial Engineering at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in 2017. She got a FPU grant from the Spanish Government to develop a PhD thesis in Mechanical Engineering from 2017 to 2021. Her thesis, titled “Thermo-mechanical modelling to evaluate solar receiver damage”, obtained the outstanding PhD dissertation award in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Organization for theses defended at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in 2021. In 2022 she was promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She carried out an international research stay at Boise State University (Idaho, USA) in 2022. Her research interests include heat transfer, thermal stress, and creep-fatigue analyses of components in solar power tower plants.
Rafael Pérez Álvarez
Assistant Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Rafael Pérez Álvarez
Assistant Professor
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Biography: Degree in Mechanical Engieneering and Master in Industrial Engieneering in Carlos III University of Madrid. Master in Numerical Simulation in Engineering with ANSYS in Polytechnic University of Madrid. PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Organization in Carlos III University of Madrid. His current research topics are the Design and optimization of receivers of Solar Tower Power plants. He is currently finishing his Ph.D thesis on these topics through CFD and structural simulations. He was awarded with a PhD fellowship of Predoctoral Investigator (FPI) by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad in the framework of solar research project at Carlos III University of Madrid from April 2017 to September 2021.
Darío Pardillos Pobo
FPU Predoctoral Fellowship
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Darío Pardillos Pobo
FPU Predoctoral Fellowship
Department of Thermal and Fluids Engineering
Carlos III University of Madrid
Biography: Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering with the Best Student Record (Carlos III University of Madrid, 2016-2020). Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering with a Scholarship from the Department of Mechanical Engineering (Carlos III University of Madrid, 2020-2022). Doctoral Candidate in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Organization program with a grant from the Spanish Government (Carlos III University of Madrid, 2022-Present). His current research focuses on the thermal design of a novel once-through coil-wound steam generator system to improve the reliability and flexibility of solar power tower plants. Other research interests include improving the competitiveness of concentrating power plants through an electric heater for storing renewable curtailment.
Publications
Pardillos-Pobo, D., González-Gómez, P.A., Laporte-Azcúe, M., Cholette, M.E., Santana, D. Design of coil-wound heat exchangers for molten chloride salt TES in CSP with sodium receiver and sCO2 cycle. Journal of Energy Storage, 2025, 128, 117210.
Pardillos-Pobo, D., González-Gómez, P.A., Santana, D. Superheater-reheater integration in a one-shell coil-wound heat exchanger: analytical thermo-economic design for CSP. Applied Thermal Engineering, 2025, 279, 127632.
D. Pardillos-Pobo, P.A. González-Gómez, M. Laporte-Azcué, D. Santana, 2023. Thermo-economic design of an electric heater to store renewable curtailment in solar power tower plants. Energy Conversion and Management 297, 117710.
M. Laporte-Azcué, M.R. Rodríguez-Sánchez, 2024, Thermal efficiency and endurance enhancement of tubular solar receivers using functionally graded materials. Applied Energy, 360, 122842.
Conferences
Berbey-Burgos, M., Pardillos-Pobo, D., Laporte-Azcúe, M., González-Gómez, P.A., Santana, D. Impact of Price Cap Policy on Concentrating Solar Power Plant Revenue in Electricity Markets. International Conference on the European Energy Market (EEM), 2024
D. Pardillos-Pobo, P. A. González-Gómez, M. Berbey-Burgos and D. Santana. Design of Coil-Wound Once-Through Steam Generator System for Concentrating Solar Power Plants. 29th SolarPACES Conference. Sydney, Australia, 10-13 octubre 2023.
R.H. Khraishi, M. Laporte-Azcué, M.R. Rodríguez-Sánchez, Characterization of an Induction Heating System Used as Solar Simulator. 29th SolarPACES Conference. Sydney, Australia, 10-13 octubre 2023.
Funding Entities
Grant TED2021-129326B-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR.
