Excerpt from article published by Cooling Post
Echogen Power Systems and its partners – Shell, Reaction Engines, Avery Dennison, Goodyear, Mars Corporation, TotalEnergies and Unilever – are to receive $3m to develop a pilot-scale heat pump capable of heating air to over 300°C using an ambient temperature heat source.
The system will use a supercritical CO2 cycle driven by a low specific speed centrifugal compressor and a novel high temperature CO2-to-air heat exchanger. The supercritical CO2 cycle is said to enable a high COP and high process temperatures without the need for waste heat recovery, while the fluid’s high density and heat capacity enables reduction in heat exchanger size.
It is claimed that the technology could reduce life cycle carbon emissions by more than 90% and energy intensity by more than 50% relative to natural gas fired heaters.