Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Cycles for Concentrated Solar Power Plants: A Possible Alternative for Solar Desalination

This manuscript investigates the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power cycle employed in block of concentrated solar (CSP) plants—solar tower—as an alternative for desalination, developed with either distillation or reverse osmosis. concept is investigated as a possible up-scaling SOLMIDEFF project, originally based on hot-air micro gas turbine combined dish collector. For upscaled concept, five different sCO2 cycles are considered, chosen amongst best-performing configurations proposed literature CSP applications, and modelled Thermoflex software. The influence ambient conditions studied, considering two minimum temperatures (35 °C 50 °C), corresponding to Santa Cruz de Tenerife Abu Dhabi, respectively. results show that low at inlet heat rejection unit compromise viability technologies. On other hand, high thermal efficiency achieved by these cycles, especially recompression partial cooling layouts, reduces specific energy consumption when osmosis (RO), below photovoltaic (PV)+RO. Feed-water preheating explored solution further reduce consumption, concluding its actual interest not clear strongly depends location considered water quality standards.