Supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO₂) Brayton cycles (BC) are soon to be a competitive and environment friendly power generation technology. Progressive technological developments in turbo-machineries and heat exchangers have boosted the idea of using S-CO₂ in a closed-loop BC. This paper describes and discusses energy and exergy analysis of S-CO₂ BC in cascade arrangement with a secondary cycle using CO₂, R134a, ammonia, or argon as working fluids. Pressure drop in the cycle is considered, and its effect on the overall performance is investigated. No specific heat source is considered, thus any heat source capable of providing temperature in the range from 500 °C to 850 °C can be utilized, such as solar energy, gas turbine exhaust, nuclear waste heat, etc. The commercial software ‘Aspen HYSYS version 9’ (Aspen Technology, Inc., Bedford, MA, USA) is used for simulations. Comparisons with the literature and simulation results are discussed first for the standalone S-CO₂ BC. Energy analysis is done for the combined cycle to inspect the parameters affecting the cycle performance. The second law efficiency is calculated, and exergy losses incurred in different components of the cycle are discussed.

Supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO₂) Brayton cycles (BC) are promising alternatives for power generation. Many variants of S-CO₂ BC have already been studied to make this technology economically more viable and efficient. In comparison to other BC and Rankine cycles, S-CO₂ BC is less complex and more compact, which may reduce the overall plant size, maintenance, and the cost of operation and installation. In this paper, we consider one of the configurations of S-CO₂ BC called the recompression Brayton cycle with partial cooling (RBC-PC) to which some modifications are suggested with an aim to improve the overall cycle’s thermal efficiency. The type of heat source is not considered in this study; thus, any heat source may be considered that is capable of supplying temperature to the S-CO₂ in the range from 500 °C to 850 °C, like solar heaters, or nuclear and gas turbine waste heat. The commercial software Aspen HYSYS V9 (Aspen Technology, Inc., Bedford, MA, USA) is used for simulations. RBC-PC serves as a base cycle in this study; thus, the simulation results for RBC-PC are compared with the already published data in the literature. Energy analysis is done for both layouts and an efficiency comparison is made for a range of turbine operating temperatures (from 500 °C to 850 °C). The heat exchanger effectiveness and its influence on both layouts are also discussed.

The three-dimensional boundary layer due to a disk rotating in otherwise still fluid is well known for its sudden transition from a laminar to a turbulent regime, the location of which closely coincides with the onset of local absolute instability. The present experimental investigation focuses on the region around transition and analyses in detail the features that lead from the unperturbed boundary layer to a fully turbulent flow. Mean velocity profiles and high-resolution spectra are obtained by constant-temperature hot-wire anemometry. By carefully analysing these measurements, regions in the flow are identified that correspond to linear, weakly nonlinear, or turbulent dynamics. The frequency that dominates the flow prior to transition is explained in terms of spatial growth rates, derived from the exact linear dispersion relation. In the weakly nonlinear region, up to six clearly identifiable harmonic peaks are found. High-resolution spectra reveal the existence of discrete frequency components that are deemed to correspond to fluctuations stationary with respect to the disk surface. These discrete components are only found in the weakly nonlinear region. By systematically acquiring low- and high-resolution spectra over a range of narrowly spaced radial and axial positions, it is shown that while the transition from laminar to turbulent regimes occurs sharply at some distance from the disk surface, a complex weakly nonlinear region of considerable radial extent continues to prevail close to the disk surface.

This article deals with the thermodynamic assessment of supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO₂) Brayton power cycles. The main advantage of S-CO₂ cycles is the capability of achieving higher efficiencies at significantly lower temperatures in comparison to conventional steam Rankine cycles. In the past decade, variety of configurations and layouts of S-CO₂ cycles have been investigated targeting efficiency improvement. In this paper, four different layouts have been studied (with and without reheat): Simple Brayton cycle, Recompression Brayton cycle, Recompression Brayton cycle with partial cooling and the proposed layout called Recompression Brayton cycle with partial cooling and improved heat recovery (RBC-PC-IHR). Energetic and exergetic performances of all configurations were analyzed. Simple configuration is the least efficient due to poor heat recovery mechanism. RBC-PC-IHR layout achieved the best thermal performance in both reheat and no reheat configurations ( ${\eta }_{th}$ = 59.7% with reheat and ${\eta }_{th}$ = 58.2 without reheat at 850 °C), which was due to better heat recovery in comparison to other layouts. The detailed component-wise exergy analysis shows that the turbines and compressors have minimal contribution towards exergy destruction in comparison to what is lost by heat exchangers and heat source.