Development and Verification of a Transient Analysis Tool for Reactor System Using Supercritical CO2 Brayton Cycle as Power Conversion System

Abstract

Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle is a good choice of thermal-to-electric energy conversion system, which owns a high cycle efficiency and a compact cycle configuration. It can be used in many power-generation applications, such as nuclear power, concentrated solar thermal, fossil fuel boilers, and shipboard propulsion system. Transient analysis code for Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle is a necessity in the areas of transient analyses, control strategy study, and accident analyses. In this paper, a transient analysis code SCTRAN/CO2 is developed for Supercritical CO2 Brayton Loop based on a homogenous model. Heat conduction model, point neutron power model (which is developed for nuclear power application), turbomachinery model for gas turbine, compressor and shaft model, and PCHE type recuperator model are all included in this transient analysis code. The initial verifications were performed for components and constitutive models like heat transfer model, friction model, and compressor model. The verification of integrated system transient was also conducted through making comparison with experiment data of SCO2EP of KAIST. The comparison results show that SCTRAN/CO2 owns the ability to simulate transient process for S-CO2 Brayton cycle. SCTRAN/CO2 will become an important tool for further study of Supercritical CO2 Bryton cycle-based nuclear reactor concepts.