Study on the supercritical CO2 power cycles for landfill gas firing gas turbine bottoming cycle

• Published in: Energy (Oxford) Vol. 111; pp. 893 - 909
• Main Authors: Kim, Min Seok, Ahn, Yoonhan, Kim, Beomjoo, Lee, Jeong Ik
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 15-09-2016
• Subjects: Bottoming cycle; Landfill gas; Supercritical carbon dioxide cycle; Waste heat recovery system; Waste heat recovery system; Supercritical carbon dioxide cycle; Landfill gas; Bottoming cycle
• ISSN: 0360-5442
• DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.06.014

In this paper, a comparison of nine supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) bottoming power cycles in conjunction with a topping cycle of landfill gas (LFG) fired 5MWe gas turbine is presented. For the comparison purpose, a sensitivity study of the cycle design parameters for nine different cycles was conducted and each cycle thermodynamic performance is evaluated. In addition, the cycle performance evaluation dependency on the compressor inlet temperature variation is performed to investigate how S-CO2 cycles sensitive to the heat sink temperature variation. Furthermore, the development of new S-CO2 cycle layouts is reported and the suggested cycles' performances are compared to the existing cycle layouts. It was found that a recompression cycle is not suitable for the bottoming cycle application, but a partial heating cycle has relatively higher net produced work with a simple layout and small number of components. Although a dual heated and flow split cycle has the highest net produced work, it has disadvantages of having numerous components and complex process which requires more sophisticated operational strategies. This study identified that the recuperation process is much more important than the intercooling process to the S-CO2 cycle design for increasing the thermal efficiency and the net produced work point of view.
•Study of nine S-CO2 power cycle layouts for a small scale landfill gas power generation application.•Development of new S-CO2 cycle layouts.•Sensitivity analysis of S-CO2 cycles to evaluate and compare nine cycles' performances.