The role of turbomachinery performance in the optimization of supercritical carbon dioxide power systems

The successful penetration of supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2 ) power systems in the energy market largely depends on the achievable turbomachinery performance. The present study illustrates a systematic framework where both the compressor and the turbine are designed via validated (within ±2% pts against experiments) mean-line tools and the related impact on cycle performance estimates is quantitatively and qualitatively assessed. A significant effort is devoted to the analysis of centrifugal compressor performance operating close to the critical point, where sharp thermodynamic property variations may make critical the compression process. The analysis is performed for different compressor sizes and pressure ratios, showing a comparatively small contribution of compressor-intake fluid conditions to the machine efficiency, which may achieve technological competitive values (82 ÷ 85%) for representative full-scale sizes. Two polynomial correlations for both turbomachinery efficiencies are devised as a function of proper similarity parameters accounting for machine sizes and loadings. Such correlations can be easily embedded in power cycle optimizations, which are usually carried out assuming constant-turbomachinery efficiency, thus ignoring the effects of plant size and cycle operating parameters. Efficiency correlations are finally exploited to perform several optimizations of a recompressed sCO2 cycle, by varying multiple cycle parameters (i.e. maximum and minimum temperature, pressure ratio and net power output). The results highlight that the replacement of constant-efficiency assumption with the proposed correlations leads to more accurate performance predictions (i.e. cycle efficiency can differ by more than 4% pts), showing in particular that an optimal pressure ratio exists in the range 2 ÷ 5 for all the investigated configurations.