Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Power Cycle Development from Components to a Full System
Supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) is an attractive working fluid for a variety of reasons, especially because it has a relatively high density while still maintaining a low viscosity. Thus, this fluid can have a high power density with low pressure losses as it flows through pipes and equipment, allowing sCO2 power cycles to have compact turbomachinery and smaller piping diameters relative to other common working fluids. Higher turbine operating temperatures are attractive for power cycles because they allow higher thermodynamic efficiencies to be achieved. High-temperature sCO2 power cycles are a good application because the materials used for high-temperature piping and equipment can be smaller, and therefore the cost of the equipment for a given power size can be less than if other working fluids are selected.
Closed-loop power cycles using sCO2 as the working fluid have made significant progress moving from component and machine testing at research and lab scale to commercially relevant full-loop demonstrations. This talk will provide an overview of the sCO2 development work that has been done at Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®), including a status on the $169 million Supercritical Transformational Electric Power (STEP) Demo project. The STEP Demo project will demonstrate the operation of a recompression closed Brayton cycle (CBC) at the 10 MWe pilot scale with a turbine inlet temperature of 715°C. Recently, the project successfully completed simple-cycle CBC operation with turbine inlet temperatures up to 500°C, and the turbine produced over 8 MW of gross shaft power.
Registration required by COB Tuesday, April 22, for admittance to SwRI grounds on the day of event. All non-SwRI employees must register and enter campus at the main entrance on Culebra Road.
Date and Time
Location
Hosts
Registration
- Date: 24 Apr 2025
- Time: 04:30 PM UTC to 05:45 PM UTC
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- Southwest Research Institute
- 6220 Culebra Road
- San Antonio, Texas
- United States 78238
- Building: Bldg. 51 (Archives Conference Room)
- Starts 02 April 2025 05:00 AM UTC
- Ends 22 April 2025 10:00 PM UTC
- No Admission Charge
Speakers
Jonathan Wade of Southwest Research Institute
Biography:
Mr. Wade is the Manager of the Power Cycle Machinery section in the Mechanical Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute®. He has worked at SwRI® since 2013 and has both a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University. During his time at SwRI, he has worked on several supercritical carbon dioxide projects including the STEP Demo project.