Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Brayton Cycles Driven by Solar Thermal Power Tower System

Abstract

This chapter starts with a background about concentrating solar power systems and thermal energy storage systems and then a detailed literature review about concentrated solar power systems and supercritical Brayton carbon dioxide cycles. Next, a mathematical model was developed and presented which generates and optimizes a heliostat field effectively. This model was developed to demonstrate the optimization of a heliostat field using differential evolution, which is an evolutionary algorithm. The current model illustrates how to employ the developed model and its advantages. The optimization process calculates the optical performance parameters at every step of the optimization considering all the heliostats; thus yields accurate results as discussed in this chapter. On the other hand, complete mathematical model of supercritical CO2Brayton cycles when integrated with solar thermal power tower system was presented and discussed.