Supercritical Energy Cycles
Supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycles offer a number of benefits over competing steam Rankine cycles, namely reducing the size of turbomachinery, increased efficiency, reduction of greenhouse gases, and reduced capital cost. The augmented heat transfer and low specific volume of supercritical CO2 (S-CO2) make it a good candidate to substitute water steam in power generation cycles. Power cycles for a variety of heat sources, e.g. solar energy and fossil-fired power plants can benefit from S-CO2 as a working fluid. Our research group develops high-fidelity computational models to study the thermal and hydraulic behavior of S-CO2 to design novel heat exchangers and oxy-combustion chambers.