Giampaolo Caputo

Methane/Hydrogen Mixtures from Concentrated Solar Energy: The METISOL Project

The present chapter summarizes the results of the METISOL project, an initiative funded by the Italian Government and devoted to the production and storage in solid state adsorbers of methane/hydrogen mixtures. Two main routes were investigated for the production: steam reforming associated with Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and biological production based on optimized two steps methane and hydrogen production. The storage of the gas mixture was focused on automotive applications and was based on solid state high specific surface adsorbers such as activated carbons and Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs). The most interesting results of the project were related to the possibility to build a methane/hydrogen automotive filling station energetically coupled with the CSP/reforming plant. The following pages contain a detailed overview of the CSP plant.

Co-generation and innovative heat storage systems in small-medium CSP plants for distributed energy production

CSP technologies can be applied for distributed energy production, on small-medium plants (on the 1 MW scale), to satisfy the needs of local communities, buildings and districts. In this perspective, reliable, low-cost, and flexible small/medium multi-generative CSP plants should be developed. Four pilot plants have been built in four Mediterranean countries (Cyprus, Egypt, Jordan, and Italy) to demonstrate the approach. In this paper, the plant built in Italy is presented, with specific innovations applied in the linear Fresnel collector design and the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system, based on a single the use of molten salts but specifically tailored for small scale plants.

Conceptual study of the coupling of a biorefinery process for hydrothermal liquefaction of microalgae with a concentrating solar power plant

A conceptual analysis of the coupling of a concentrating solar power plant with a chemical process for hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of microalgae to biocrude was performed. The two plants were considered coupled by molten salt recirculation that granted energetic supply to the chemical process. Preliminary estimations have been done considering a solar field constituted by 3 linear parabolic solar collectors rows, each 200 m long, using a ternary molten salts mixture as heat transfer fluid, and a chemical plant sized to process 10 kT/y of microalgae. Under adopted conditions, we have estimated a minimum selling prize of the biocrude that is similar to that achieved in non-solar HTL processes.