Take advantage of your trip to San Antonio to see some real-world technology first hand! Take a short ride over to the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) campus to visit the Supercritical Transformational Electric Power project known as STEP Demo (www.stepdemo.us). This project will demonstrate a next-generation electricity generating plant with dramatically improved efficiencies, economics, and environmental performance.
Under this $155+ million Department of Energy public/private partnership, GTI, SwRI, and GE Research will design, build, and operate a first-of-a-kind 10 MWe pilot power plant to advance the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) Brayton power cycle.
The test facility is configured to enable optimization of system performance and characterization of critical components and subsystems over a range of operating conditions.
This initiative will integrate and prove compact, modular technologies that can be applied to generate clean, low-cost power from fossil fuels (natural gas and coal), renewable power (concentrated solar, biomass, geothermal), next-generation nuclear, industrial waste heat recovery, and shipboard propulsion.
Don't miss this opportunity to visit this newly constructed 22,000 ft2 building and see firsthand how things are coming together at this exciting demonstration site. In addition, visitors will visit SwRI's Turbomachinery Research Facility, a 10,000 ft2 laboratory with flexible test capabilities including 3 MW closed-loop compression facilities, 1 MW-scale supercritical CO2 test loops, hydrogen combustion and compression facilities, seal and bearing test rigs.
This special site tour will follow the end of sessions on Thursday, October 21 and will take about 2.5 hours. SwRI's campus is conveniently located in San Antonio, about 20 minutes away. Guests will be transported there by bus and provided with a lunch to eat on the way back to the convention center.
We look forward to seeing you at the tour!