Intelligent construction and optimization based on the heatsep method of a supercritical CO2 brayton cycle driven by a solar power tower system

The current progress in tower-based solar thermal concentrators and receivers enables achieving temperatures within the required range of 500-700 degrees C for the S-CO2 Brayton cycle. Within this temperature range, the efficiency of the S-CO2 Brayton cycle exceeds that of conventional steam power cycles. This study applies the S-CO2 Brayton cycle to concentrated power generation systems, emphasizing structural and parameter optimization. By utilizing the operational parameters of tower-based solar thermal power generation as boundary conditions and maximizing specific power as the optimization objective, various configurations derived from a maximum of two fundamental cycles are systematically enumerated. Subsequently, an intelligent algorithm optimizes the power cycle flow and parameters for each structure, further optimizing the heat exchanger network. The findings reveal that the optimized configuration shares a common heating and cooling process. This optimization yields a specific power increase of 14.62 kJ/kg compared to the reference case, indicating a 13.26 % enhancement. Additionally, the cycle efficiency improves to 47.45%, marking a 28.52% increase. The overall system efficiency for the solar power tower system reaches 32.03 %, with an exergy efficiency of 32.19 %.