Power conversion system design for supercritical carbon dioxide cooled indirect cycle nuclear reactors

The supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO₂) cycle is a promising advanced power conversion cycle which couples nicely to many Generation IV nuclear reactors. This work investigates the power conversion system design and proposes several "Third Generation" plant layouts for power ratings ranging between 20 and 1200 MWe for the recompression cycle. A 20 MWe simple cycle layout was also developed. The cycle designs are characterized by a dispersed component layout in which a single shaft turbomachinery train is coupled to parallel arrays of multiple printed circuit heat exchanger modules. This configuration has arrangement benefits in terms of modularity, inspectability, repairability and replaceability. Compared to the prior second generation dispersed layouts, its lower ductwork pressure drop confers approximately 2% higher thermal efficiency. Two alternative S-CO₂ cycle designs for medium power applications were developed using an in-house optimization computer code and Solid Edge software. The first design is a recompression cycle derived from the 300 MWe design developed at MIT for Generation IV reactors. The design employs one turbine, two compressors (main and recompression) working in parallel and two recuperators (high and low temperature) and maximizes cycle efficiency while striving for a small plant footprint. The second design is a simple S-CO₂ power cycle, which has only one turbine, one compressor, and one recuperator. The main focus of the simple S-CO₂ design is cycle compactness and simplicity while achieving still attractive efficiency. Extensive sensitivity studies were performed for both the medium power recompression and simple S-CO₂ cycles to reveal areas for performance improvement, or performance degradation. Cycle efficiency is most sensitive to turbine inlet temperature.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Gibbs, Jonathan Paul

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Pravel Hejzlar and Michael J. Driscoll.

• Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/44765

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/44765