IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v120y2017icp549-564.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Analysis and comparison of solar-heat driven Stirling, Brayton and Rankine cycles for space power generation

Author

Listed:
  • Toro, Claudia
  • Lior, Noam

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of solar-heat driven Brayton, Rankine and Stirling cycles operating in space with different working fluids. Generation of power in space for terrestrial use can represent a great future opportunity: the low-temperature of space (∼3 K), allows the attainment of very high efficiency even with low-temperature heat inputs, and the solar energy input is higher in space than on earth. This paper shows a comparative analysis of advanced Brayton, Rankine and Stirling cycles to improve the understanding of the optimal trade-off between high efficiency and the smallest needed heat rejection area. The effect of the main cycles' operational parameters and plant layouts on efficiency and power to radiator area ratio have been analyzed. The thermal efficiency of regenerative-reheated-intercooled Brayton cycle was found to be the best among the investigated configurations. The power to radiator area ratio was found to increase with the introduction of reheating for both the Rankine and Brayton cycles. Stirling cycles efficiencies are lower than those obtained by the Brayton and Rankine cycles but with values of power to radiator area ratio equal to about half of those obtained by Brayton cycles but much higher than those obtained by the Rankine cycles.

Suggested Citation

  • Toro, Claudia & Lior, Noam, 2017. "Analysis and comparison of solar-heat driven Stirling, Brayton and Rankine cycles for space power generation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 549-564.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:120:y:2017:i:c:p:549-564
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.11.104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544216317431
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2016.11.104?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lior, Noam, 2011. "The ECOS 2009 World Energy Panel: An introduction to the Panel and to the present (2009) situation in sustainable energy development," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 3620-3628.
    2. Zidanšek, Aleksander & Ambrožič, Milan & Milfelner, Maja & Blinc, Robert & Lior, Noam, 2011. "Solar orbital power: Sustainability analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1986-1995.
    3. Rokni, Masoud, 2013. "Thermodynamic analysis of SOFC (solid oxide fuel cell)–Stirling hybrid plants using alternative fuels," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 87-97.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hu, Dinghua & Li, Mengmeng & Li, Qiang, 2021. "A solar thermal storage power generation system based on lunar in-situ resources utilization: modeling and analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 223(C).
    2. Jiang, Han & Xi, Zhongli & A. Rahman, Anas & Zhang, Xiaoqing, 2020. "Prediction of output power with artificial neural network using extended datasets for Stirling engines," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 271(C).
    3. Ouyang, Tiancheng & Su, Zixiang & Yang, Rui & Wang, Zhiping & Mo, Xiaoyu & Huang, Haozhong, 2021. "Advanced waste heat harvesting strategy for marine dual-fuel engine considering gas-liquid two-phase flow of turbine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    4. Leverone, Fiona & Pini, Matteo & Cervone, Angelo & Gill, Eberhard, 2020. "Solar energy harvesting on-board small satellites," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 954-972.
    5. Zare, Shahryar & Tavakolpour-Saleh, Alireza & Shourangiz-Haghighi, Alireza & Binazadeh, Tahereh, 2019. "Assessment of damping coefficients ranges in design of a free piston Stirling engine: Simulation and experiment," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 633-643.
    6. Tesio, U. & Guelpa, E. & Verda, V., 2022. "Comparison of sCO2 and He Brayton cycles integration in a Calcium-Looping for Concentrated Solar Power," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    7. Jose Egas & Don M. Clucas, 2018. "Stirling Engine Configuration Selection," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-22, March.
    8. Hadžiselimović, Miralem & Srpčič, Gregor & Brinovar, Iztok & Praunseis, Zdravko & Seme, Sebastijan & Štumberger, Bojan, 2019. "A novel concept of linear oscillatory synchronous generator designed for a stirling engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 19-27.
    9. Kunniyoor, Vijayaraj & Singh, Punit & Nadella, Karthik, 2020. "Value of closed-cycle gas turbines with design assessment," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 269(C).
    10. Liu, Yiwei & Shen, Tianrun & Lv, Xiaochen & Zhang, Guang & Wang, Chao & Gu, Junping & Zhang, Xian & Wang, Qinggong & Chen, Xiong & Quan, Xiaojun & Yao, Wei, 2023. "Investigation on a lunar energy storage and conversion system based on the in-situ resources utilization," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    11. Liu, Zekuan & Wang, Zixuan & Cheng, Kunlin & Wang, Cong & Ha, Chan & Fei, Teng & Qin, Jiang, 2023. "Performance assessment of closed Brayton cycle-organic Rankine cycle lunar base energy system: Thermodynamic analysis, multi-objective optimization," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(PA).
    12. Xu, Chi & Kong, Fanli & Yu, Dali & Yu, Jie & Khan, Muhammad Salman, 2021. "Influence of non-ideal gas characteristics on working fluid properties and thermal cycle of space nuclear power generation system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    13. Biondi, Alfonso & Toro, Claudia, 2019. "Closed Brayton Cycles for Power Generation in Space: Modeling, simulation and exergy analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 793-802.
    14. Li, Xueling & Li, Renfu & Hu, Lin & Zhu, Shengjie & Zhang, Yuanyuan & Cui, Xinguang & Li, Yichao, 2023. "Performance analysis of a dish solar thermal power system with lunar regolith heat storage for continuous energy supply of lunar base," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 263(PE).
    15. Yang, Liu & Su, Zixiang, 2022. "An eco-friendly and efficient trigeneration system for dual-fuel marine engine considering heat storage and energy deployment," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(PA).
    16. Pradeep, N. & Reddy, K.S., 2022. "Design and investigation of solar cogeneration system with packed bed thermal energy storage for ceramic industry," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 243-263.
    17. Wang, Jiangjiang & Chen, Yuzhu & Lior, Noam & Li, Weihua, 2019. "Energy, exergy and environmental analysis of a hybrid combined cooling heating and power system integrated with compound parabolic concentrated-photovoltaic thermal solar collectors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 463-476.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lior, Noam, 2013. "Mirrors in the sky: Status, sustainability, and some supporting materials experiments," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 401-415.
    2. Lior, Noam, 2012. "Sustainable energy development (May 2011) with some game-changers," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 3-18.
    3. Lior, Noam, 2012. "Sustainable energy development: The present (2011) situation and possible paths to the future," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 174-191.
    4. Hu, Dinghua & Li, Mengmeng & Li, Qiang, 2021. "A solar thermal storage power generation system based on lunar in-situ resources utilization: modeling and analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 223(C).
    5. Rokni, Masoud, 2014. "Biomass gasification integrated with a solid oxide fuel cell and Stirling engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 6-18.
    6. Yang, Fei & Gu, Jianmin & Ye, Luhan & Zhang, Zuoxiang & Rao, Gaofeng & Liang, Yachun & Wen, Kechun & Zhao, Jiyun & Goodenough, John B. & He, Weidong, 2016. "Justifying the significance of Knudsen diffusion in solid oxide fuel cells," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 242-246.
    7. Frank, Matthias & Deja, Robert & Peters, Roland & Blum, Ludger & Stolten, Detlef, 2018. "Bypassing renewable variability with a reversible solid oxide cell plant," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 101-112.
    8. Moradpoor, Iraj & Ebrahimi, Masood, 2019. "Thermo-environ analyses of a novel trigeneration cycle based on clean technologies of molten carbonate fuel cell, stirling engine and Kalina cycle," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 1005-1016.
    9. Obara, Shin'ya & Morel Rios, Jorge Ricardo & Okada, Masaki, 2015. "Control of cyclic fluctuations in solid oxide fuel cell cogeneration accompanied by photovoltaics," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 994-1008.
    10. Jiao, Yong & Zhang, Liqin & An, Wenting & Zhou, Wei & Sha, Yujing & Shao, Zongping & Bai, Jianping & Li, Si-Dian, 2016. "Controlled deposition and utilization of carbon on Ni-YSZ anodes of SOFCs operating on dry methane," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 432-443.
    11. Alonso, J. & Batlles, F.J., 2014. "Short and medium-term cloudiness forecasting using remote sensing techniques and sky camera imagery," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 890-897.
    12. Jienkulsawad, Prathak & Arpornwichanop, Amornchai, 2016. "Investigating the performance of a solid oxide fuel cell and a molten carbonate fuel cell combined system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 843-853.
    13. Wang, Yuqing & Zeng, Hongyu & Shi, Yixiang & Cao, Tianyu & Cai, Ningsheng & Ye, Xiaofeng & Wang, Shaorong, 2016. "Power and heat co-generation by micro-tubular flame fuel cell on a porous media burner," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 117-123.
    14. Eom, Seongyong & Ahn, Seongyool & Rhie, Younghoon & Kang, Kijoong & Sung, Yonmo & Moon, Cheoreon & Choi, Gyungmin & Kim, Duckjool, 2014. "Influence of devolatilized gases composition from raw coal fuel in the lab scale DCFC (direct carbon fuel cell) system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 734-740.
    15. Escrig, H. & Batlles, F.J. & Alonso, J. & Baena, F.M. & Bosch, J.L. & Salbidegoitia, I.B. & Burgaleta, J.I., 2013. "Cloud detection, classification and motion estimation using geostationary satellite imagery for cloud cover forecast," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 853-859.
    16. Kupecki, Jakub & Motylinski, Konrad, 2018. "Analysis of operation of a micro-cogenerator with two solid oxide fuel cells stacks for maintaining neutral water balance," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 888-895.
    17. Xenos, Dionysios P. & Hofmann, Philipp & Panopoulos, Kyriakos D. & Kakaras, Emmanuel, 2015. "Detailed transient thermal simulation of a planar SOFC (solid oxide fuel cell) using gPROMS™," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 84-102.
    18. Azizi, Mohammad Ali & Brouwer, Jacob, 2018. "Progress in solid oxide fuel cell-gas turbine hybrid power systems: System design and analysis, transient operation, controls and optimization," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 237-289.
    19. Choudhary, Tushar & Sanjay,, 2017. "Thermodynamic assessment of SOFC-ICGT hybrid cycle: Energy analysis and entropy generation minimization," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 1013-1028.
    20. Amedi, Hamid Reza & Bazooyar, Bahamin & Pishvaie, Mahmoud Reza, 2015. "Control of anode supported SOFCs (solid oxide fuel cells): Part I. mathematical modeling and state estimation within one cell," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 90(P1), pages 605-621.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:120:y:2017:i:c:p:549-564. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.