De Pere, WI – The U.S. Department of Energy granted CompRex, LLC a $150,000 Phase I grant to develop the manufacturing process for commercial scale compact heat exchangers needed for next generation power plants.
Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle has the potential of reaching 50% efficiency, significantly greater than the current steam Ranking cycle used today. However, a critical bottleneck for the commercialization of this system is the lack of compatible large-scale and economically viable recuperator heat exchangers, which transfer heat between two sCO2 streams. CompRex, which manufactures compact heat exchangers for high temperature/high pressure applications, has developed a new heat exchanger design to improve the efficiency of the recuperator, thereby reducing size and cost of this major piece of equipment. By exploiting the flexibility of CompRex’s ShimRex® heat exchanger design, CompRex has developed the ShimRex-ACE exchanger, which increases the surface area efficiency between the hot and cold stream, allowing heat to transfer more freely between the two streams.
“CompRex appreciates the support of the DOE to prove out this new transformative design through building a large-scale prototype of the exchanger,” said Dr. Zhijun Jia, the company’s CEO.
Successful scale up of CompRex’s technology will provide a competitive and suitable solution for the Department of Energy's Supercritical Transformational Electric Power (STEP) program’s 10 MWe system as well as other Brayton-cycle commercialization efforts. The objective of this phase I project is to derisk and establish best practices in the manufacturing process for the scaled-up ShimRex®-ACE heat exchanger. CompRex will explore and demonstrate the techniques required to manufacture the commercial scale diffusion bonded core block and cost-effectively join individual diffusion-bonded cores into a larger block meeting ASME BPV Code requirements.
About CompRex, LLC
Since its founding in 2014, CompRex, LLC has established itself as a leading supplier of highly advanced industrial heat exchangers and reactors for use under extreme conditions in applications such as power generation, petrochemical production, and waste treatment. Our products offer unparalleled performance, compact footprint, and significant cost savings, enabling us to win multi-million dollar projects alongside the likes of GE, Boeing, MIT, and UCLA. We are proudly based in America’s heartland, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where we have a state-of-the art in-house manufacturing facility, and with the support of our partners, we are able to design, engineer, and produce ASME-certified systems to our many customers.