Machine learning discovery of cost-efficient dry cooler designs for concentrated solar power plants

Journal article

Concentrated solar power (CSP) is one of the few sustainable energy technologies that offers day-to-night energy storage. Recent development of the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) Brayton cycle has made CSP a potentially cost-competitive energy source. However, as CSP plants are most efficient in desert regions, where there is high solar irradiance and low land cost, careful design of a dry cooling system is crucial to make CSP practical. In this work, we present a machine learning system to optimize the factory design and configuration of a dry cooling system for an sCO2 Brayton cycle CSP plant. For this, we develop a physics-based simulation of the cooling properties of an air-cooled heat exchanger. The simulator is able to construct a dry cooling system satisfying a wide variety of power cycle requirements (e.g., 10–100 MW) for any surface air temperature. Using this simulator, we leverage recent results in high-dimensional Bayesian optimization to optimize dry cooler designs that minimize lifetime cost for a given location, reducing this cost by 67% compared to recently proposed designs. Our simulation and optimization framework can increase the development pace of economically-viable sustainable energy generation systems.

Authors: Narasiah, H; Kitouni, O; Scorsoglio, A; Sturdza, BK; Hatcher, S

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Journal: Scientific Reports
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 1
• Article number: 19086
• Publication date: 2024-08-17
• Acceptance date: 2024-07-10
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-67346-6
• EISSN: 2045-2322
• Language: English
• Keywords: Dry cooling; Concentrated solar power; Inverse design; Bayesian optimization