An experiment study was carried out in order to investigate feasibility of CO 2 -based Rankine cycle powered by solar energy. The proposed cycle is to achieve a cogeneration of heat and power, which consists of evacuated solar tube collectors, power generating turbine, heat recovery system, and feed pump. The Rankine cycle of the system utilizes solar collectors to convert CO 2 into high-temperature supercritical state, used to drive a turbine and produce electrical power. The cycle also recovers thermal energy, which can be used for absorption refrigerator, air conditioning, hot water supply so on for a building. A set of experimental set-up was constructed to investigate the performance of the CO 2 -based Rankine cycle. The results show the cycle can achieve production of heat and power with reasonable thermodynamics efficiency and has a great potential of the application of the CO 2 -based Rankine cycle powered by solar energy. In addition, some research interests related to the present study will also be discussed in this paper.
SUMMARYIn this paper, the performance of solar energy powered transcritical cycle using supercritical carbon dioxide for a combined electricity and heat generation, is studied experimentally. The experimental set-up consists of evacuated solar collectors, pressure relief valve, heat exchangers and CO 2 feed pump. The pressure relief valve is used to simulate operation of a turbine and to complete the thermodynamic cycle. A complete effort was carried out to investigate the cycle performances not only in summer, but also in winter conditions. The results show that a reasonable thermodynamic efficiency can be obtained and COP for the overall outputs from the cycle is measured at 0.548 and 0.406, respectively, on a typical summer and winter day. The study shows the potential of the application of the solar energy powered cycle as a green power/ heat generation system.
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