The potential of transcritical cycles based on CO<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" altimg="si122.svg" display="inline" id="d1e5487"><mml:msub><mml:mrow /><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math> mixtures: An exergy-based analysis

This paper focuses on the thermodynamic comparison between pure supercritical Carbon Dioxide and blended transcritical power cycles by means of a thorough exergy analysis, considering efficiency, destruction efficiency losses from Carnot cycle as main figures merit. A reference plant based steam Rankine representative state-of-the-art (SoA) Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants is selected base-case. Two different temperatures energy (heat) source are considered: 575 °C 725 (next generation CSP). Compared to SoA cycles, CO2 blends enable gains up 2.7 percentage points at °C. At °C, they outperform both with efficiencies 75.3%. performance brought significant reduction in across compression heat rejection process rounding 50%. Additionally, it has been found that internal condensation occurring inside recuperator for those mixtures large temperature glide improves supporting use simpler layouts without split-compression. Finally, exhibit lower degradation than sCO2 event an increase design ambient temperature.