A novel nuclear combined power and cooling system integrating high temperature gas-cooled reactor with ammonia–water cycle

• We propose a novel nuclear ammonia–water power and cooling cogeneration system.
• The high temperature reactor is inherently safe, with exhaust heat fully recovered.
• The thermal performances are improved compared with nuclear combined cycle.
• The base case attains an energy efficiency of 69.9% and exergy efficiency of 72.5%.
• Energy conservation and emission reduction are achieved in this cogeneration way.

A nuclear ammonia–water power and refrigeration cogeneration system (NAPR) has been proposed and analyzed in this paper. It consists of a closed high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) topping Brayton cycle and a modified ammonia water power/refrigeration combined bottoming cycle (APR). The HTGR is an inherently safe reactor, and thus could be stable, flexible and suitable for various energy supply situation, and its exhaust heat is fully recovered by the mixture of ammonia and water in the bottoming cycle. To reduce exergy losses and enhance outputs, the ammonia concentrations of the bottoming cycle working fluid are optimized in both power and refrigeration processes. With the HTGR of 200 MW thermal capacity and 900 °C/70 bar reactor-core-outlet helium, the system achieves 88.8 MW net electrical output and 9.27 MW refrigeration capacity, and also attains an energy efficiency of 69.9% and exergy efficiency of 72.5%, which are higher by 5.3%-points and 2.6%-points as compared with the nuclear combined cycle (NCC, like a conventional gas/steam power-only combined cycle while the topping cycle is a closed HTGR Brayton cycle) with the same nuclear energy input. Compared with conventional separate power and refrigeration generation systems, the fossil fuel saving (based on CH4) and CO2 emission reduction of base-case NAPR could reach ∼9.66 × 104 t/y and ∼26.6 × 104 t/y, respectively. The system integration accomplishes the safe and high-efficiency utilization of nuclear energy by power and refrigeration cogeneration.