Search for the Optimal Design of a Supercritical-CO2 Brayton Power Cycle from a Superstructure-Based Approach Implemented in a Commercial Simulation Software

Qiao Zhao , Mounir Mecheri , Thibaut Neveux (1, 2) , Romain Privat , Jean-Noël Jaubert (2) , Yann Le Moullec

1 EDF R&D LNHE - Laboratoire National d’Hydraulique et Environnement
2 LRGP - Laboratoire Réactions et Génie des Procédés

Improving the efficiency and flexibility of fossil-fired power plants remains a current and challenging issue. In that regard, supercritical CO2 Brayton cycles offer promising potential. This paper aims to apply a process synthesis approach to the design of a closed Brayton cycle using supercritical CO2 as a working fluid with a coal furnace as a heat source. The general methodology presented here for designing closed power cycles includes the construction of a superstructure containing all relevant possible cycle layouts, the formulation of the cycle-synthesis problem as a mathematical optimization problem, and its solution using an appropriate algorithm. This study was conducted with the help of a process simulation commercial software (PROSIM) and using the Mixed-Integer Distributed Ant Colony Optimization (MIDACO) as a commercial optimization algorithm. This work highlights the limits of a purely technical optimization approach that would ignore the economical layer. The optimal structure obtained regarding Levelized Cost Of Electricity (LCOE) minimization is a configuration with one reheat of the supercritical CO2 in the boiler, two recuperators, and one recompression loop around the low-temperature recuperator; it is associated with a cycle efficiency of 49.35 % and a 10% reduction in the LCOE in comparison to the optimal case found through energy optimization under typical design heuristics constraints.

Mots clés: design optimization S-CO 2 cycle superstructure; design optimization; S-CO 2 cycle; superstructure

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Qiao Zhao, Mounir Mecheri, Thibaut Neveux, Romain Privat, Jean-Noël Jaubert, et al.. Search for the Optimal Design of a Supercritical-CO2 Brayton Power Cycle from a Superstructure-Based Approach Implemented in a Commercial Simulation Software. Energies, 2023, 16 (14), pp.5470. ⟨10.3390/en16145470⟩. ⟨hal-04167574⟩