A supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) gas turbine can generate power at a high cycle thermal efficiency, even at a modest temperature level of 500–550°C. Its high thermal efficiency is attributed to markedly reduced compressor work at the vicinity of the critical point. Furthermore, the reaction between Na and CO2 is milder than that between H2O and Na. Consequently, a more reliable and economically advantageous power generation system is achieved by coupling with a Na cooled fast reactor. In a typical design, the reactor thermal power, a turbine inlet pressure and an inlet temperature are, respectively, 600 MW, 20 MPa and 527°C. In the S-CO2 gas turbine system, a partial cooling cycle is used to compensate a difference in heat capacity for the high-temperature – low-pressure side and the low-temperature – high-pressure side of the recuperators to achieve high cycle thermal efficiency. The flow is divided into two streams before the precooler. One stream goes to recuperator 2 via a main compressor (MC); the other goes to recuperator 1 via a bypass compressor (BC). The performance and integrity of these two compressors are crucial. As described herein, an aerodynamic design of BC is given. The inlet temperature, inlet pressure, exit pressure and mass flow rate are, respectively, 77°C, 8 MPa, 20 MPa and 1392 kg/s. The salient features of this compressor are its compact size and a large bending stress caused by the large mass flow rate. The number of stages is numerous associated with the large enthalpy rise compared with MC. To achieve as high efficiency as possible, not a centrifugal type but an axial type is examined first. The aerodynamic design was conducted using one-dimensional design method, where the loss model of Cohen et al. is used. Its aerodynamic design enables the use of several stages and provides total adiabatic efficiency of 21 and 87%, respectively. Then, CFD analysis was conducted using “FLUENT”. Blade shapes were prepared based on flow angles and chord length obtained in the aerodynamic design. The CO2 properties in a fluid computer dataset “PROPATH” were used. The features of gas velocity distribution and pressure distribution were confirmed to the fundamental knowledge. The value of the calculated flow rate coincided very well with that of the design.
Cycle Thermal Efficiency of Supercritical CO2 Gas Turbine Dependent on Recuperator Performance