Adoption of CO2 blended with C6F6 as working fluid in CSP plants

Abstract

The adoption of CO2-based mixtures as power block working fluid for CSP plant can turn supercritical CO2 cycles into efficient transcritical cycles even at high ambient temperature, with significant performance improvement and potential power block cost reduction. In this work, the use of CO2+C6F6 mixture as working fluid for a power cycle coupled with a solar tower is analyzed. Two different cycle maximum temperatures (550°C and 650°C) are considered and for both configurations the overall plant design is performed. The yearly energy yield is computed with hourly data and the LCOE is minimized varying storage and cycle recuperator sizes. Results show comparable results for the innovative working fluid and for the sCO2 cycles