Jun 19, 2024
We congratulate Alex Bender on his diploma defense
From left to right: Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Sebastian Rochau, the diploma student Alex Bender and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Beckmann after the defense
On June 17, 2024, Alex Bender successfully defended his thesis on "Development of a waste heat utilization concept for the innovative RefLau grid control power plant". The thesis was supervised by Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Sebastian Rochau.
Mr. Bender's task was to investigate the use of waste heat in the RefLau grid control power plant at the Schwarze Pumpe site, taking into account the derivation of load scenarios for the heat sources and sinks as well as the provision of cooling. Another focus was on characterizing the technologies that could potentially be used to utilize the waste heat flows and on dimensioning the necessary components such as heat pumps, pumps, thermal storage units, etc. to create a static, overall energy model.
Mr. Bender himself summarizes his work as follows:
"In the innovative RefLau control power plant, in addition to renewable energies and green hydrogen for sector coupling, waste heat is also to be used as useful heat for heating and hot water preparation in buildings. To this end, a waste heat concept is being presented in which both cooling capacity is provided and heating is supplied by a district heating network. Short-term grid control is achieved with battery storage systems. For long-term energy storage, an electrolyser produces hydrogen, which is converted back into electricity by a fuel cell when required.
These energy conversion processes generate waste heat, which is bundled in a fluid flow and transferred to a district heating network with thermal storage via a heat pump. The thermal storage unit performs the same function as the battery and hydrogen for electrical energy. It couples the asynchronous needs of the cooling capacity on the one hand and the heating capacity on the other.
When using fluctuating renewable energy, the dimensioning of the power plant and storage components plays a decisive role in order to generate the highest possible average capacity utilization. Wind and solar energy complement each other in the right proportions throughout the year. In the model presented here, the solar to wind power ratio is 27/70 and the power plant thus occupies an area of approx. 150 ha."
We congratulate Mr. Bender on his successful graduation and wish him all the best for the future.