Powder2Power Special Session at ESRE 2026 highlights latest advances in particle-driven CSP technologies

July 22, 2026

The Powder2Power consortium participated in the 8th International Conference on Environmental Sciences and Renewable Energy (ESRE 2026), held in Milan, Italy, from 3 to 5 July 2026. On 4 July, the project organised a dedicated Special Session entitled “Particle-driven Concentrated Solar Technologies: from Component Development to Digitalization“, bringing together project partners and international researchers working on high-temperature concentrated solar power technologies.

The session provided an opportunity to present the latest progress achieved within Powder2Power and to discuss the scientific and technological challenges associated with the development of fluidised particle-driven CSP systems.

The Special Session opened with a keynote lecture by Prof. Gilles Flamant (PROMES-CNRS), who presented the overall Powder2Power concept and its technological architecture. The keynote explained how fluidised particles simultaneously provide heat transfer and thermal energy storage, enabling operation at temperatures beyond the limits of conventional molten-salt CSP technologies. It also introduced the project’s first system-level performance assessment, estimating a gross efficiency of approximately 29% for a realistic 50 MWth particle-driven CSP plant, while identifying particle conveying, fluidisation and auxiliary power consumption as key challenges that will be addressed through the ongoing demonstration activities.

The session then covered the different technological building blocks of the Powder2Power concept, illustrating how component-level research contributes to the development of future commercial systems. Highlights included:

Solar receiver modelling, demonstrating how local heat-transfer conditions and off-design operation influence thermal losses and temperature distributions, reinforcing the importance of advanced modelling and control approaches.
Particle heat exchanger modelling, where CFD simulations and reduced-order models challenged common assumptions regarding particle mixing and improved the prediction of large-scale system performance.
Environmental assessment, identifying the main life-cycle hotspots associated with materials, manufacturing and system integration to support more sustainable solar tower designs.
Techno-economic assessment, investigating industrial-scale plant configurations combining particle receivers, thermal storage and supercritical CO₂ cycles to evaluate future deployment pathways for dispatchable renewable electricity generation.

The programme also featured a presentation by Magdalena Barnetche (Build to Zero) on cascaded PCM thermal storage for hybrid CSP plants within the HYBRIDplus Horizon Europe project, illustrating developments in thermal energy storage technologies.

The scientific quality of the session was recognised through two ESRE 2026 Best Presentation Awards, presented to Simone Girelli (Politecnico di Milano), and Eduardo Oñate Oyaneder (PROMES-CNRS). The consortium warmly congratulates both award recipients on this achievement!

The consortium also thanks Prof. Gilles Flamant, Prof. Jan Baeyens, Prof. Raf Dewil and Prof. Valentina Busini for organising and chairing the Special Session, as well as the ESRE 2026 Organising Committee for hosting the conference.

The Powder2Power Special Session demonstrated the strong scientific progress achieved across the project, covering topics from system architecture and component optimisation to environmental and techno-economic assessment. The discussions held during ESRE 2026 will contribute to the next stages of the project, including the ongoing MW-scale demonstration at the Themis solar tower in France.

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