Off-Design Simulation of Supercritical CO2 Power Plants and Components

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The Brayton cycle based on supercritical CO₂ (sCO₂) as the working fluid is an innovative concept for converting thermal energy to electrical energy. Numerous studies have shown that these sCO₂ power cycles have the potential to attain significantly higher cycle efficiencies than either a conventional steam Rankine cycle or even the ultra-supercritical steam Rankine cycle. Higher cycle efficiency will lead to lower fuel cost, lower water usage, and in the case of fossil fuel heat sources, lower greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, sCO₂ cycles operate at high pressures throughout the cycle, resulting in a working fluid with a high density, which allows for smaller equipment sizes, a smaller carbon footprint, and therefore lower capital cost.

Due to changing ambient conditions, thermal inputs, power production requirements, and so on, a power plant will not always operate at its design conditions. Therefore, when evaluating the overall life cycle performance of a power plant, it is necessary to consider off-design performance. Performing analyses and simulations to evaluate the cycle efficiency will help us understand the effect and importance of the components (turbine and compressor) on the cycle efficiency.

Supercritical CO₂ is a hot topic that SoftInWay Inc, a leading turbomachinery software and consulting services provider, quickly embraced. Numerous designs, analysis and optimization projects have been successfully performed by our experienced and professional engineers on both the cycle and the component levels. SoftInWay’s in-house software AxCYCLE™ can be used to simulate sCO₂ cycles and AxSTREAM® can be used to design and analyze turbines and compressors involved in the sCO₂ cycle. Additionally, AxSTREAM ION™ can be used to integrate these programs together to automate and accelerate the entire development process.

In this webinar, we will briefly review previous studies on sCO₂ cycles and introduce different sCO₂ cycle configurations. We will also discuss how to accurately calculate cycle efficiency for off-design simulation of sCO₂ cycles by using the AxSTREAM® platform. From there, we will show you how to build a workflow in AxSTREAM ION™ and connect AxCYCLE™ and AxSTREAM® together. Through this method, the off-design analysis process doesn’t rely on compressor and turbine maps (which can only give us an approximate result by interpolation). Instead, it allows us to calculate the exact performance of the turbomachine from the cycle boundaries to get accurate cycle efficiency under off-design condition.

The scope includes:

• Introduction to sCO₂ applications and overview of the results from previous studies
• Comparison of different sCO₂ cycle examples
• Introduction to the AxSTREAM® platform including AxSTREAM®, AxCYCLE™, and AxSTREAM ION™ as well as how each can be applied to analyze off-design conditions in sCO₂ applications
• Demo of the design process using AxSTREAM ION™ to simulate off-design sCO₂ cycles and component performance in order to calculate accurate cycle efficiency

Who should attend?

• Turbomachinery, Mechanical, and Development Engineers interested or currently working in the sCO₂ industry and performing off-design simulations
• Engineering managers and supervisors who want an introduction to the sCO₂ cycle design and analysis process.
• Engineering students looking for a comprehensive case study to optimize existing equipment; and students looking to widen and deepen their understanding of supercritical CO₂

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