Analysis of a Fluidized-Bed Particle/Supercritical-CO2 Heat Exchanger in a Concentrating Solar Power System

Concentrating solar power (CSP) development has focused on increasing the energy conversion efficiency and lowering the capital cost. To improve performance, CSP research is moving to high-temperature and high-efficiency designs. One technology approach is to use inexpensive, high-temperature heat transfer fluids and storage, integrated with a high-efficiency power cycle such as the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO₂) Brayton power cycle. The sCO₂ Brayton power cycle has strong potential to achieve performance targets of 50% thermal-to-electric efficiency and dry cooling at an ambient temperature of up to 40 °C and to reduce the cost of power generation. Solid particles have been proposed as a possible high-temperature heat transfer or storage medium that is inexpensive and stable at high temperatures above 1000 °C. The particle/sCO₂ heat exchanger (HX) provides a connection between the particles and sCO₂ fluid in emerging sCO₂ power cycles. This article presents heat transfer modeling to analyze the particle/sCO₂ HX design and assess design tradeoffs including the HX cost. The heat transfer process was modeled based on a particle/sCO₂ counterflow configuration, and empirical heat transfer correlations for the fluidized bed and sCO₂ were used to calculate heat transfer area and estimate the HX cost. A computational fluid dynamics simulation was applied to characterize particle distribution and fluidization. This article shows a path to achieve the cost and performance objectives for a particle/sCO₂ HX design by using fluidized-bed technology.