Tools for supercritical carbon dioxide cycle analysis and the cycle's applicability to sodium fast reactors

The Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) and the Supercritical Carbon Dioxide (S-C0₂) Recompression cycle are two technologies that have the potential to impact the power generation landscape of the future. In order for their implementation to be successful, they must compete economically with existing light water reactors and the conventional Rankine cycle. Improvements in efficiency, while maintaining safety and proliferation goals, will allow the SFR to better compete in the electricity generation market. These improvements will depend on core design as well as the balance of plant, including the choice of steam or C0₂ as the working fluid. This work has developed some of the tools necessary for evaluating different design core and balance of plant options. Much of it has concentrated on the S-C0₂ Recompression cycle. S-C0₂ promises to be useful as a working fluid in high-efficiency power conversion systems for SFRs because it achieves higher efficiencies at the high temperatures associated with SFRs. The recompression cycle is capable of operating with very high efficiencies due to the low compressor work needed when C0₂ approaches its critical point at the compressor inlet. The potential of this cycle to meet the needs of next-generation plants must be investigated across the entire range of operations and within each component of the system. A steady-state code for analysis of the recompression cycle was previously developed at MIT in the form of CYCLES II, but the present work has made significant improvements to this code that make the new version, CYCLES III, more versatile.

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

2009

Author dc:creator

• Ludington, Alexander R. (Alexander Rockwell)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Pavel 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/1721.1/52798

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/52798