Energy and exergy performance investigation of transcritical CO2-based Rankine cycle powered by solar energy

Abstract

A comprehensive performance evaluation of a solar assisted transcritical CO2-based Rankine cycle system is made with exergy analysis method. The actual thermal data taken from the all-day experiment of the system are utilized to determine energy transfer and the exergy destructions in each component of the system. In addition, a hypothetical carbon dioxide expansion turbine is introduced, then two thermodynamic models for solar transcritical carbon dioxide Rankine cycles with a throttling valve (experiment) and with an expansion turbine have been established with exergy analysis method. The obtained results clearly show that solar collector contributes the largest share to system irreversibility and entropy generation in the all-day working state, and the exergy improvement potential of solar collector is the maximum in the working state. So this component should be the optimization design focus to improve system exergy effectiveness. For the cycle with the turbine, the energy efficiency and the entropy generation are not much higher than the cycle with throttling valve, but the exergy efficiency of the cycle with turbine is twice of the cycle with throttling valve. It provides more guidance when the transcritical CO2-based Rankine system is in a large-scale solar application.