Techno-economic comparison of sCO2 cycles for particle-based CSP at design-point conditions

• Cycle cost, efficiency, and HTF temperatures impact cycle selection. • The simple and turbine split flow cycles are optimal. • Recuperator cost limits the optimal efficiency of power cycles. • Lower turbine inlet temperatures are preferable to 700 °C. In this work, we compare the techno-economic performance of supercritical carbon dioxide power cycles integrated in a particle CSP system. We model four core cycle configurations: simple (with optional bypass), recompression (with optional bypass), partial cooling, and turbine split flow, which each demonstrate different benefits in a CSP system, such as high efficiency, low cost, or large HTF temperature differences. We parametrically sweep cycle design variables for each configuration. The set of power cycle performance results are then combined with a design point particle CSP system model which calculates the system specific cost. The simple cycle and turbine split flow cycles have the best performance in the baseline results, with system specific costs of 5,912 and 5,899 $/kWe respectively. In addition to the baseline set of results, we also vary key parameters and costs in a sensitivity study. The cycle designs with the best system performance limit their efficiency to ∼45 %, despite demonstrating higher maximum efficiencies, due to the rapid increase in cost of recuperation as efficiencies rise. The simple cycle has strong performance in the analysis and is on average only 1.4 % worse than the optimal configuration. Lowered turbine inlet temperatures from the sensitivity study improve performance by reducing the PHX and turbine cost. Decreasing the inlet temperature from 700 to 625 °C results in an >8 % decrease in system specific cost. Future work should expand sensitivity analyses to colder turbine inlet temperatures and calculate system performance by simulating annual performance with off-design solar and cycle component models.