Supercritical carbon dioxide cycle thermodynamic and exergoeconomic improvements using a bidirectional coupling strategy

Supercritical carbon dioxide (SCO2) combined cycle power system, one of the potentially effective ways to achieve energy grade utilization of the medium and high-temperature heat sources, is vulnerable to ambient temperatures as the system performance is susceptible to the compressor inlet temperature. So far, most studies have been focused on the system performance analysis and optimization under ideal operation conditions while the mitigation of unfavorable ambient temperature is missed. In this work, a bidirectionally-coupled system is proposed to reduce the compressor inlet temperatures in the original SCO2 cycle power system so that the adverse effects of ambient temperature are alleviated. The proposal utilizes the low-grade waste heat in a SCO2 recompression reheat Brayton cycle (i.e., topping cycle) to drive an absorption refrigeration cycle (i.e., bottoming cycle) which in turn precools the compressor inlet of the topping cycle. The thermodynamic and exergoeconomic analyses have been conducted for the proposed bidirectionally-coupled combined SCO2 RRBC and ARC system, with the attention to the effects of ambient temperatures on the system performance. Our results show that the combined SCO2 RRBC and ARC system increases the energy efficiency relative to the standalone cycle power system by over 5% at the ambient temperatures of 303.15 K or above, while the exergy efficiency improves by 1.124%–3.574%. In terms of the exergoeconomic factor, the combined SCO2 RRBC and ARC system also exhibits superiority against standalone cycle power system. The current work proves that a conventional recuperated SCO2 cycle system can be improved both thermodynamically and economically by coupling it to an absorption refrigeration cycle, despite of the additional upfront costs for the components. The discovery could further promote the commercial application of the SCO2 cycle power systems in new generation plants.