Effect of Actual Recuperators’ Effectiveness on the Attainable Efficiency of Supercritical CO2 Brayton Cycles for Solar Thermal Power Plants

One of the most promising concentrated solar power technologies is central receiver tower station with heliostat field, which has attracted renewed research interest in current decade. The introduction sCO2 recompression Brayton cycles near future installations instead Rankine cycle very probable, due to prospects a significant efficiency improvement, process equipment size and capital cost reduction. In this study, energy exergy analysis configuration for are performed. Special emphasis given computation actual performance High-Temperature Recuperator Low-Temperature Recuperator. results define realistic thermal exergetic limits specific configurations applied on plant variable turbine entry temperature. Thermal efficiency, predicted improved accuracy heat exchanger computations, does not exceed 50% target. Overall, realizable total 37% at 900 K temperature predicted, improvement state-of-the-art steam cycles.