A Feasibility Study of CO2-Based Rankine Cycle Powered by Solar Energy

Abstract

An experiment study was carried out in order to investigate feasibility of CO 2 -based Rankine cycle powered by solar energy. The proposed cycle is to achieve a cogeneration of heat and power, which consists of evacuated solar tube collectors, power generating turbine, heat recovery system, and feed pump. The Rankine cycle of the system utilizes solar collectors to convert CO 2 into high-temperature supercritical state, used to drive a turbine and produce electrical power. The cycle also recovers thermal energy, which can be used for absorption refrigerator, air conditioning, hot water supply so on for a building. A set of experimental set-up was constructed to investigate the performance of the CO 2 -based Rankine cycle. The results show the cycle can achieve production of heat and power with reasonable thermodynamics efficiency and has a great potential of the application of the CO 2 -based Rankine cycle powered by solar energy. In addition, some research interests related to the present study will also be discussed in this paper.

Thermodynamic analysis of the CO2-based Rankine cycle powered by solar energy

“…In the present study, the evacuated collector described by Zhang et al (2005) was used, which is shown in Figure 2, and the details can be seen in the Reference. A simple one-dimensional model was set up to simulate the solar collector.…”

“…The measured value of 0:012 kg s À1 (Zhang et al, 2005) was used for CO 2 mass flow rate m CO 2 : January, April, July and October are selected as typical winter, spring, summer and autumn seasons, respectively, in Kyoto, Japan.…”

“…In 2004, a solar thermal technology by using carbon dioxide as working fluid was suggested (Zhang et al, 2005;Yamaguchi et al, 2006). It consists of a solar collector array, power generating turbine, high-temperature heat recovery system, low-temperature heat recovery system and feed pump.…”

Research on convection heat transfer character of super critical carbon dioxide flows inside horizontal tube

“…Its ODP (ozone depression potential) equals to 0, and GWP (global warming potential) equals to 1. It can be used widely in industry, such as working fluid in Rankine cycle [2], refrigeration cycle [3][4] and seperated heat pipe system [5][6][7]. In the heat exchanger of Rankine or refrigeration cycle, carbon dioxide is super critical fluid, so it is important to study the heat transfer character of super critical carbon dioxide.…”

Parametric optimization design for supercritical CO2 power cycle using genetic algorithm and artificial neural network

“…Zhang et al investigated a thermodynamic cycle powered by solar energy for both power and heat generation using supercritical carbon dioxide as a working fluid on theoretical aspect [2][3][4], and they examined the effects of various design conditions and climate conditions on the performances of this CO 2 -based Rankine cycle. They also set up an experimental system to validate the feasibility of this supercritical carbon dioxide cycle [5][6][7][8]. Cayer et al [9] expressed a detailed analysis of a carbon dioxide trans-critical power cycle using an industrial low-grade stream of process gases as its heat source.…”