Studies of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Brayton Cycle Performance Coupled to Various Heat Sources

The concern about the global climate change and the unstable supply of fossil fuels stimulate the research of the new energy source utilization and the efficient energy system design. As the interests on the future energy sources and renovating the conventional power plants grow, an efficient and widely applicable power conversion system is required to satisfy both requirements. S-CO2 cycle is considered as a promising candidate with the advantages of 1) relatively high efficiency in the modest temperature (450–750°C) region because of non-ideal properties near the critical point, 2) effectively reduced size of the total cycle with compact turbo-machines and heat exchangers, 3) potential for using in various applications with competitive efficiency and simple layout. The S-CO2 cycle was originally considered as an attractive candidate for the power conversion cycle of the next generation nuclear reactors. However, due to many benefits of the S-CO2 cycle, it is recently considered in other conventional and renewable energy system applications including fossil fuel power plant system, ship propulsion application, concentrated solar power system, fuel cell bottoming power cycle and so on. This paper will discuss about the design of S-CO2 cycle for the various energy system applications over different temperature range. Unlike a large size power plant which usually focuses more on maximizing the cycle efficiency, a small capacity energy system is seriously concerned about the total size of the cycle. In this manner, several preliminary S-CO2 cycle designs will be compared in terms of the efficiency and the physical size. Various layouts and components of S-CO2 cycle are compared to find the optimum cycle for each energy systems. The in-house codes developed by the KAIST research team are used to evaluate the various cycle performances and component preliminary designs. The obtained results will be compared to the conventional power conversion systems along with its implication to other existing designs.Copyright © 2013 by ASME