Proposed Amendment between California Energy Commission
and

Abengoa Solar Inc

Title: Advanced Energy Delivery for Food Processing: Direct Steam Generation in Parabolic Trough Solar Collectors

Amount: $0.00

Term: No term change

Contact: Michael Lozano

Committee Meeting: 4/4/2011

Funding

FY / Program / Area / Initiative / Budget / This Project / Remaining Balance

Recommendation

Approve this amendment with Abengoa Solar Inc. for $0.00. Staff recommends placing this item on the consent calendar of the Commission Business Meeting.

Issue

This amendment would modify certain language in the agreement.

The proponent requested clarification language be inserted in the agreement stating that software with no connection to this project not be subject to a license. Energy Commission legal counsel suggested the following language: "Software. In the event that the University (subcontractor) develops software under this Agreement that is not identified as a product (a deliverable to the Commission), University shall have the right to copyright and/or patent such software and grants the Energy Commission a royalty-free, no-cost, non-exclusive, irrevocable, non-transferable, worldwide, perpetual license to produce and use the software, its derivatives and upgrades for governmental purposes. The Commission has no rights to any software developed by the University outside of this Agreement."

This language was deemed acceptable by the proponent's legal counsel.

Background

This proposal arises out of PON-08-007 for Improving Energy Efficiency in California's Food Processing and Dairy Processing Industry. This competitive RD&D grant solicitation was sponsored by the PIER Industrial/Agriculture/Water Program to solicit technologies and/or scientific advances that will significantly reduce energy and water use in California's food processing and dairy processing industries. Outcomes of research projects from recommended grant awards will be shared and serve as a model for food and dairy processors to adapt to their own specific situations to improve production efficiencies and thereby enhance competitiveness of industry in California.

It is estimated that this technology has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of solar steam systems by up to 20% when compared to other systems. The target market for this technology is the California Food Processing Industry, which consumes up to of 600 million therms of natural gas annually. The Dairy Industry can also benefit from this technology (pasteurization and equipment sterilization applications) uses 76 million therms a year.

Proposed Work

This project aims to use Direct Steam Generation technology to deliver saturated steam to industrial processes as a means of increasing performance and reducing the cost of solar steam used to augment Natural Gas boilers such as those used in food processing industry. The state of the art solar thermal systems utilize a closed loop of heat transfer liquid, which is routed through a heat exchanger to heat water into steam. The Direct Steam Generation approach heats water to steam directly, which simplifies design and has the potential to reduce capital costs. This approach still has technical problems that need to be overcome for this technology to be adopted. As the water is heated to steam by the collectors, a two-phase flow problem is introduced into the same piping. Deliverables related to this project will refine, improve and if necessary build new computer models to predict two phase flow pressure drop and flow regime, and to investigate single loop and parallel path flow instabilities. This knowledge will be used to design an experimental test program and to engineer a test loop that will be used to investigate Direct Steam Generation under realistic conditions.

Justification and Goals

Supports California's goal to the 2008 Program Plan and Funding Request as approved by the CPUC; and this project "[will] advance energy science or technologies of value to California citizens..." (Public Resources Code 25620.(c)), and is part of a "full range of research, development, and demonstration activities that . . . are not adequately provided for by competitive and regulated markets (Public Resources Code 25620.1.(a)).

This will be accomplished by:

·  Demonstrating the direct steam generation technology to deliver saturated steam using solar in a cost-effective manner

1 of 2 PIR-09-003-01

Abengoa Solar Inc.