The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) awarded a $425,309 Cooperative Agreement to the University of Dayton Research Institute Division to develop scalable performance and optimization tools for particle-to-supercritical CO2 heat exchangers and commercial-scale trough designs in multi-stage falling particle receivers for concentrating solar power (CSP) systems. The research will leverage the University's expertise in discrete element method modeling to characterize high-temperature granular flow performance, enabling machine learning-aided dimensional analysis to identify scaling arguments for CSP infrastructure components. This will facilitate more cost-effective and optimized CSP system designs, supporting rapid innovation from laboratory to commercial deployment. The project aims to improve the efficiency and reduce the costs of commercial CSP systems by March 2026.
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