研究目的
Investigating the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power cycle for solar thermal central receiver systems to increase high-temperature input and efficiency for next-generation concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) systems.
研究成果
The study demonstrates that lab-scale microchannel receivers can operate at incident fluxes in excess of 100 W/cm2 at thermal efficiencies in excess of 90%. The scale-up of the lab-scale unit cells for commercial plants was presented, showing potential for reliable, cost-competitive CSP sCO2 technology. However, significant research and development efforts in material science, advanced fabrication and manufacturing, thermal and fluid sciences, and cost-modeling are needed to realize this technology.
研究不足
The study highlights the challenges of relatively poor convective heat transfer coefficients of gases, high-pressure and high-temperature operation, and the potential for manufacturing complexity due to the requirement of multiple parallel flow paths to minimize pressure drop. Additionally, the cost of materials and the need for multidisciplinary research and development efforts are noted as constraints.