Low-grade Heat Source Utilization by Carbon Dioxide Transcritical Power Cycle

摘要

One way to reduce the fossil fuel consumption and mitigate environmental impact is to utilize low-grade heat sources for power production. In this paper, a transcritical carbon dioxide power cycle is analyzed for its potential in utilizing the low-grade heat sources. Solar thermal is selected as a representative of low-grade heat sources. TRNSYS 16~1 and Engineering Equation Solver (EES)~2 are employed using co-solving technique to analyze the dynamic performance of the proposed system. Both daily performance and annual performance of the proposed system under Swedish climate conditions are simulated. The simulation results show that the proposed system can achieve 8% average thermal efficiency and consequently 2.43 kW average power production during the system working period on a randomly selected summer day with a 30 m~2 solar collector. Over the whole year, the maximum daily power production is about 17 kWh and the maximum monthly power production is about 185 kWh.