Optimization of a recompression supercritical carbon dioxide cycle for an innovative central receiver solar power plant

Peculiar thermodynamic properties of carbon dioxide (CO2) when it is held at or above its critical condition (stated as supercritical CO2 or sCO2) have attracted the attention of many researchers. Its excellent thermophysical properties at medium-to-moderate temperature range have made it to be considered as the alternative working fluid for next power plant generation. Among those applications, future nuclear reactors, solar concentrated thermal energy or waste energy recovery have been shown as the most promising ones. In this paper, a recompression sCO2 cycle for a solar central particles receiver application has been optimized, observing net cycle efficiency close to 50%. However, small changes on cycle parameters such as working temperatures, recuperators efficiencies or mass flow distribution between low and high temperature recuperators were found to drastically modify system overall efficiency. In order to mitigate these uncertainties, an optimization analysis based on recuperators effectiveness definition was performed observing that cycle efficiency could lie among 40%-50% for medium-to-moderate temperature range of the studied application (630 °C-680 °C). Due to the lack of maturity of current sCO2 technologies and no power production scale demonstrators, cycle boundary conditions based on the solar application and a detailed literature review were chosen.