CO2 Hub Lab
The core of the CO2 Hub is a reverse industrial refrigeration machine, modified and developed to supply conditioned CO2 to enable experimental campaigns on components and systems for energy and industrial applications of CO2. CO2 can be tapped from the machine at different points in the thermodynamic cycle, allowing the input conditions to be set for testing on various components, such as:
- Small-scale closed-loop geothermal simulators and heat exchangers
- Small expanders and compressors
- Cooling systems for hot machine parts
- Ejectors
The geothermal test section has two possible configurations: one for investigating the natural convection effect, the other for analysing deterioration in transcritical heat transfer at different angles of inclination with respect to the vertical direction. It uses a 10 kW/1 kA adjustable DC power supply to resistively heat the duct located at the bottom of the circuit, which simulates the geothermal source. A heat exchanger at the top simulates surface thermal utilisation.
The CO2 Hub can operate under the following conditions:
| Test Type | Pin (bar) | Pout (bar) | Tin (C°) | mflow (kg/s) |
| High temperature test and expanders | 110 (max) | 20 (min) | 120 (max) | 0.3 (max) |
| Components under transcritical conditions | 110 (max) | 10-40 | 0.3 (max) | |
| Tests at low temperatures | 10-50 | -30 (min) | 0.3 (max) |
Last update
23.12.2025