Summary Increasing demand of electricity and severer concerns to environment call for green energy sources as well as efficient energy conversion systems. SCO2 power cycles integrated with concentrating solar power (CSP) are capable of enhancing the competitiveness of thermal solar electricity. This article makes a comprehensive review of supercritical CO2 power cycles integrated with CSP. A detailed comparison of four typical CSP technologies is conducted, and the cost challenge of currently CSP technologies is pointed out. The thermophysical properties of sCO2 and the corresponding two real gas effects are analyzed elaborately to express the features of sCO2 power cycles. An extensive review of sCO2 layouts relevant for CSP including 12 single layouts and 1 combined layout is implemented logically. Strengths and weaknesses of sCO2 power cycles over traditional steam‐Rankine cycle generally adopted in current CSP plants are concluded, followed by metal material degration summary in CSP relevant temperature sCO2 environment, which shows that the nickel‐based alloy is a proper structural material candidate for sCO2‐CSP integration. Thermodynamic analyses of sCO2 power cycles when integrated with CSP are divided into three level of which design‐point analysis and off‐design modeling are conducted and compared, more researches into the off‐design point analysis, dynamic modeling, especially the transient behavior are suggested. Economic analysis of the integrated system is concluded and presents a considerable levelized cost of electricity reduction of 15.6% to 67.7% compared to that of state of art CSP. Taking the thermodynamic and economic analysis into consideration, target designs of sCO2 power cycles for CSP are summarized in three aspects. Finally, current theoretical and experimental researches of sCO2 power cycles integrated with CSP for market penetration are introduced. The strengths, weaknesses, and potential solutions to the gaps of three potential pathways (molten salt pathway, particle pathway, and gas phase pathway) to realize the integration of sCO2 power cycles in the next CSP generation plants up to 700°C are reviewed. In general, the integration of sCO2 power cycles with CSP technologies exhibits promising expectations for facilitating the competitiveness of thermal solar electricity.

Summary Heat pump–assisted drying has been recognized a prospective technology to meet the requirement of energy saving. However, large temperature lift will be resulted by the single‐stage heat pump cycle during the high‐temperature drying, especially operating with low ambient temperature for open‐loop drying, which leads to insufficient heat output, high compression ratio, and low coefficient of performance (COP). Two heat pump cycles, namely, multitemperature cascade cycle and combined single‐stage cycle, are proposed to address the above problems in the drying process with large temperature lift in this paper. The effects of varying operation parameters on the heat pump cycles are analyzed to optimize the cycle performance. Afterwards, the above two cycles as well as a conventional cascade cycle, a two‐stage compression cycle, and a single‐stage compression cycle are compared with each other in terms of cycle performance and drying performance under specified drying conditions. It is indicated by the results that the COPs of the multitemperature cascade cycle and combined single‐stage cycle are about 95% and 88% higher than that of the single‐stage compression cycle, respectively. As for the two cascade cycles (ie, conventional cascade cycle and multitemperature cascade cycle), 49% more water evaporation with the same power input can be resulted by the added condenser and evaporator. Among the five analyzed cycles, the multitemperature cascade cycle is the most promising to be used in the retrofitting of the drying equipment with large temperature lift.

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