Comparative analysis of supercritical CO2 Brayton cycles with simple and partial cooling configurations

Abstract

The theoretical analysis of the thermodynamic cycles and the physical processes that occur in a cyclical way has improved the knowledge needed to improve the energy efficiency and the performance of the energy transfer systems in science and engineering. Power generation, cooling, and heating processes are improved by means of numerical methods to study the thermodynamic changes of flows involved in the energy transfer between mechanical devices coupled in industrial processes. Taking into account the growing concern in the recent years for the developing of the new power production schemes related to the steam or gas flows applied to non-conventional sources like solar radiation, residual heat production, wind energy, and, biomass combustion, this paper proposes a thermodynamic analysis of supercritical carbon dioxide (S – CO2) Brayton cycle considering new alternatives of power generation in order to satisfy the elevated energy demand with the improvement of the physical parameters simulated in the thermodynamic model. The first and the second laws of thermodynamics are computed in the mathematical algorithm applied in order to solve the steady-state of the flow pressure and the heat transferred during the power production under different working conditions. The simple and partial cooling configuration is studied in this research considering the less complex features of the supercritical carbon dioxide cycle with the aim to validate the prediction of the mathematical algorithm applied with MATLAB software and verify the improvement of the thermodynamic configuration proposed in this research. A good agreement has been reached during the numerical validation of the model with an error rate of less than 2 percent between the numerical data analyzed with a computed model.