Analysis of design, off-design and annual performance of supercritical CO2 cycles for csp applications

Supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) cycles are studied as the next-generation power cycles in order to reduce the cost of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants. The design performance of numerous cycles has been investigated, nevertheless, the off-design and annual performance of these cycles are seldom studied. This plays a critical role in selecting an optimal cycle for CSP application, as an efficient power cycle influences the solar field size, consequently affecting the Levelised cost of electricity (LCOE). In this study, the design, off-design and annual performance of three sCO2 cycles; simple recuperative, recompression and partial-cooling cycles are studied. Multi-objective optimisation was performed and the off-design Pareto fronts were compared for the changes in the power cycle boundary conditions. Annual performance simulation was carried out, and the performance of the three cycles was compared when the power cycle is operated in maximum efficiency mode, which facilitates selecting the optimal cycle. The LCOE of the simple recuperated cycle was higher by roughly 1.7¢/kWh than recompression cycle when maximising the power cycle efficiency and the partial cooling cycle is higher by 0.2¢/kWh. However, operating the power cycle in the maximum efficiency mode significantly lowers the plant capacity factor (around 10-20%)

Off-design and annual performance analysis of supercritical carbon dioxide cycle with thermal storage for CSP application

Supercritical Carbon Dioxide (sCO2) cycles can achieve higher efficiency compared to steam-Rankine or Air-Brayton cycles, therefore they are promising for concentrated solar power applications. Although sCO2 cycles show higher design efficiency, the off-design efficiency is highly sensitive to the ambient conditions, impacting the power block net-power and heat input. In the present work a recompression sCO2 cycle is connected to a central-tower solar field with two-tank thermal storage delivering molten chloride salt at 670 °C. The temperature of the molten-salt exiting from the power block and returning to the cold storage tank increases by 46 °C with respect to the design value when the compressor inlet temperature is raised by 13 °C relative to the design condition of 42 °C, which implies that the capacity of the thermal storage reduces by 25%. The main focus of this work is to investigate the off-design performance of a sCO2 recompression cycle under variable ambient temperature, molten-salt inlet temperature and molten-salt flow rate. Multi-objective optimisation is carried-out in off-design conditions using an in-house code to explore the optimal operational strategies and the Pareto fronts were compared. Since the power cycle can either be operated in maximum power mode or maximum efficiency mode, this study compares these two operational strategies based on their annual performance. Results indicate that the capacity factor of the concentrated solar power can be increased by 10.8% when operating in maximum power mode whilst the number of start-ups is reduced by about 50% when operating in maximum efficiency mode

Thermo-economic analysis, optimisation and systematic integration of supercritical carbon dioxide cycle with sensible heat thermal energy storage for CSP application

Integration of thermal energy storage with concentrated solar power (CSP) plant aids in smoothing of the variable energy generation from renewable sources. Supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) cycles can reduce the levelised cost of electricity of a CSP plant through its higher efficiency and compact footprint compared to steam-Rankine cycles. This study systematically integrates nine sCO2 cycles including two novel configurations for CSP applications with a two-tank sensible heat storage system using a multi-objective optimisation. The performance of the sCO2 cycles is benchmarked against the thermal performance requirement of an ideal power cycle to reduce the plant overnight capital cost. The impacts of the compressor inlet temperature (CIT) and maximum turbine inlet temperature (TIT) on the cycle selection criteria are discussed. The influence of the cost function uncertainty on the selection of the optimal cycle is analysed using Monte-Carlo simulation. One of the novel cycle configurations (C8) proposed can reduce the overnight capital cost by 10.8% in comparison to a recompression Brayton cycle (C3) for a CIT of 55 °C and TIT of 700 °C. This work describes design guidelines facilitating the development/selection of an optimal cycle for a CSP application integrated with two-tank thermal storage

Synthesis and characterisation of a ternary composite of polyaniline, reduced graphene-oxide and chitosan with reduced optical band gap and stable aqueous dispersibility

International audienceA ternary composite comprising of p-toluene sulfonic acid doped polyaniline (PANI), chitosan and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) with stable aqueous dispersibility has been synthesised via oxidative polymerisation of aniline in chitosan/RGO dispersion. For comparison; PANI, PANI/chitosan and PANI/RGO composites were also synthesised using the same procedure. FTIR, Raman, XPS, XRD and UV-VIS confirmed the successful synthesis of the PANI and the composites. The aqueous dispersions of the PANI/chitosan and the ternary composites were found to be stable even after more than four months. The stability of the dispersion was attributed to the polycationic nature of the chitosan. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) shows an improved thermal stability for the ternary composite compared to PANI, PANI/chitosan and PANI/RGO composites up to about 160 degrees C. In addition, the electrical conductivity of the ternary composite is around 33 and 2.6 times greater than that of PANI/chitosan composite and PANI, respectively. Interestingly, the analysis of the band gap shows the lowest value of optical band gap of 2.25 eV for the ternary composite compared to PANI, PANI/chitosan and PANI/RGO with 2.50 eV, 2.60 eV and 2.44 eV, respectively. The reduced band gap for the ternary composite might be attributed to the formation of conductive networks throughout the chitosan matrix due to uniform dispersion of RGO in the chitosan matrices as well as the possible grafting of PANI onto chitosan backbone. These observed properties indicate the potential utilisation of the ternary composite in optical, electrical, optoelectronic and many other industrial applications