Preliminary Assessment of sCO2Power Cycles for Application to CSP Solar Tower Plants

This work presents a preliminary thermodynamic assessment of three different supercritical CO2(sCO2) power cycles integrated in a high temperature solar tower system, working up to 800°C. An indirect cycle configuration is considered with KCl-MgCl2molten salt as heat transfer fluid (HTF) in the solar receiver and a two tanks thermal energy storage (TES) system. The most promising cycle configuration is selected, optimizing the cycle turbine inlet temperature to achieve the best compromise between cycle and receiver efficiency. An estimate of the yearly energy yield of the proposed power plant is finally performed, indicating the possibility of reaching solar-to-electric efficiency of about 17.5%.