Holtec completes district heating system design

According to Holtec, HI-HEAT can provide a carbon-free solution for district heating in countries facing gas supply shortages as well as countries aiming to shrink the footprint of fossil fuels in their national economies. An external thermal source - which could be a co-located nuclear power plant such as an SMR, or molten salt from a solar power plant - is used to heat a thermal capacitor made of a trademarked material called Feorite, to temperatures reaching 700°C. Laboratory tests to re-confirm the critical characteristics of Feorite are underway to complete the quality documentation on the development programme, the company said.

A single shop-manufactured HI-HEAT module can store more than 300 million BTUs of thermal energy in its Feorite capacitor which is enough to produce 300,000 pounds of steam, and there is no limit on the number of modules that can be arrayed in parallel to achieve the rate of steam generation needed for a district, Holtec added.

"The express aim of our Green Boiler technology is to help decarbonise the world’s economy, which suffers from a deeply imbedded use of fossil fuels in practically every sector," Holtec Director of Advanced Technology Programmes Joe Jankauskas said.