DINASOL – Development through IA of decarbonization systems for the industry of Navarre, based on solar energy

The industrial sector is a significant emitter of greenhouse gases and the possibilities for reducing or offsetting these emissions are key for the energy transition. Thus, one of the alternatives with the greatest potential for optimizing the decarbonization of industry is the installation of hybrid solar plants that generate both electricity and process heat, replacing the conventional plant concept, with electricity consumption fed directly from the grid and thermal consumption covered by a gas boiler, with a renewable industrial plant concept, in which thermal and electrical consumption are fed from renewable sources of different origin. To advance in this transition, the present DINASOL project will develop and validate a tool that, using Artificial Intelligence, will be able to pre-design, for any industrial installation, and taking into account the particular characteristics and requirements of the factory, the best option for a hybrid solar generation plant. The contemplated work can be divided into three main work blocks:

1. Study of the state of the art of the available decarbonization technology, as well as the thermal and electrical consumption of the different industrial sectors in the Community of Navarra, which will allow defining both the requirements of the solar plants and the technologies to be used.
2. Development of a computer application, based on simplified electric-thermal models of the plant, that takes advantage of the optimization methodologies by means of AI, to provide the optimal plant scheme according to the input parameters defined by the industry to be studied.
3. Application of the results given by this application to 3 case studies in 3 industries of different important industrial sectors in Navarra, developing detailed models of these plants and providing an optimization of the production process and energy generation to maximize the independence of the plant from fossil fuels, as well as the economic benefit.

CENER will provide, in addition to the coordination of the project, the modeling and simulation of the thermal and electrical systems as well as the storage and possible electrification systems. It is also in charge of the technical-economic optimization based on AI tools, the generation of simple-to-use software for industrial application and the pre-design of the generation plant for 3 case studies.