Performance Analysis and Optimization of Supercritical CO2 Recompression Brayton Cycle Coupled With Organic Flash Cycle With a Two-Phase Expander

Abstract In this work, a combined supercritical CO2 recompression Brayton cycle (SCRBC)/organic flash cycle with a two-phase expander (OFCT) system is proposed to improve the thermal efficiency of the SCRBC, which utilizes a two-phase expander to replace the high-pressure throttling valve of a basic organic flash cycle (OFC). In addition, the OFCT is coupled at the waste heat end of the SCRBC as the bottom cycle for the use of waste heat at low temperatures. A comprehensive comparison is carried out for different organic working fluids, including the R123, R245fa, R142B, R236ea, and R600, regarding the thermal performance, environmental effect, and safety levels. Furthermore, influences of various factors on the thermal performance of the combined SCRBC/OFCT cycle are also examined, including the top cycle pressure ratio, top cycle turbine inlet temperature, mass flowrate ratio, evaporation temperature, and the condenser's pinch point temperature difference. A multi-objective optimization approach is employed on the combined SCRBC/OFCT system, which considers both the thermal efficiency and the specific investment cost as the objective function, and the optimization procedure is implemented through the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) algorithm. The Pareto solution set and the compromise solution are finally obtained. The results indicate that the optimized combined SCRBC/OFCT system can improve the thermal efficiency by 11.75% and 9.70% when compared with the SCRBC and SCRBC/OFC, respectively.