A study of transcritical carbon dioxide cycles with heat regeneration

The paper presents an efficiency analysis of two transcritical CO₂ power cycles with regenerative heaters. For the proposed cycles, calculations of thermal efficiency are given for selected values of operating parameters. It was assumed that the highest working temperature and pressure are in the range from 600 to 700°C and 40 to 50 MPa, respectively. The purpose of the calculations was optimization of the pressure and mass flows in the regenerative heaters to achieve maximum cycle efficiency. It follows that for the assumed upper CO₂ parameters, efficiency of 51-54% can be reached, which is comparable to the efficiency of a supercritical advanced power cycle considered by Dostal.