IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v295y2024ics0360544224008752.html

Parameters analysis and techno-economic comparison of various ORCs and sCO2 cycles as the power cycle of Lead–Bismuth molten nuclear micro-reactor

Author

Listed:
  • Zhang, Shijie
  • Li, Liushuai
  • Huo, Erguang
  • Yu, Yujie
  • Huang, Rui
  • Wang, Shukun

Abstract

Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) and supercritical CO2 (sCO2) Brayton cycle are two key and competition technology routes as the power cycle of Lead–Bismuth micro-reactor (LBMR). However, few studies focus on the comparison of thermodynamic and economic performance between ORCs and sCO2 cycles in nuclear micro-reactor. The objectives in this study are to perform parameters analysis and techno-economic comparison in ORCs and sCO2 cycles with various configurations as the power cycle of LBMR, so as to provide the technical support for the selection of power cycle and its operating conditions in different scenarios. Several high/low-temperature working fluids are screened for ORCs in view to achieve high net efficiency (ηth) and low electricity production cost (EPC). Multi-objective optimization is performed to solve the trade-off between ηth and EPC, and then to compare the comprehensive performance of various cycles from thermodynamic, compact and economic aspects. Results show that, the ηth and EPC of ORCs are comparable or superior to that in sCO2 cycles when the two cycles have similar structures (simple/regenerative). Among the ORCs, the cascade ORC with two-side regeneration using N-Dodecane/Pentane as working fluid pair has the best performance. In all cycles, recompression sCO2 cycle performs best, but only when the heat source temperature is higher than 460 °C, the performance of the recompression sCO2 cycle are overall better than the cascade ORC.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhang, Shijie & Li, Liushuai & Huo, Erguang & Yu, Yujie & Huang, Rui & Wang, Shukun, 2024. "Parameters analysis and techno-economic comparison of various ORCs and sCO2 cycles as the power cycle of Lead–Bismuth molten nuclear micro-reactor," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 295(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:295:y:2024:i:c:s0360544224008752
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2024.131103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544224008752
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2024.131103?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zhang, Yan & Wang, Chenglong & Lan, Zhike & Wei, Shiying & Chen, Ronghua & Tian, Wenxi & Su, Guanghui, 2020. "Review of Thermal-Hydraulic Issues and Studies of Lead-based fast reactors," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    2. Jin, Taeyoung & Kim, Jinsoo, 2018. "What is better for mitigating carbon emissions – Renewable energy or nuclear energy? A panel data analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 464-471.
    3. Chen, Yuzhu & Xu, Jinzhao & Zhao, Dandan & Wang, Jun & Lund, Peter D., 2021. "Exergo-economic assessment and sensitivity analysis of a solar-driven combined cooling, heating and power system with organic Rankine cycle and absorption heat pump," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    4. Wang, Xurong & Dai, Yiping, 2016. "Exergoeconomic analysis of utilizing the transcritical CO2 cycle and the ORC for a recompression supercritical CO2 cycle waste heat recovery: A comparative study," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 193-207.
    5. Kutlu, Cagri & Li, Jing & Su, Yuehong & Wang, Yubo & Pei, Gang & Riffat, Saffa, 2020. "Investigation of an innovative PV/T-ORC system using amorphous silicon cells and evacuated flat plate solar collectors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    6. Aryanfar, Yashar & Mohtaram, Soheil & García Alcaraz, Jorge Luis & Sun, HongGuang, 2023. "Energy and exergy assessment and a competitive study of a two-stage ORC for recovering SFGC waste heat and LNG cold energy," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    7. Park, Joo Hyun & Park, Hyun Sun & Kwon, Jin Gyu & Kim, Tae Ho & Kim, Moo Hwan, 2018. "Optimization and thermodynamic analysis of supercritical CO2 Brayton recompression cycle for various small modular reactors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 520-535.
    8. Li, Ming-Jia & Xu, Jin-Liang & Cao, Feng & Guo, Jia-Qi & Tong, Zi-Xiang & Zhu, Han-Hui, 2019. "The investigation of thermo-economic performance and conceptual design for the miniaturized lead-cooled fast reactor composing supercritical CO2 power cycle," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 174-195.
    9. Li, Xiaoya & Xu, Bin & Tian, Hua & Shu, Gequn, 2021. "Towards a novel holistic design of organic Rankine cycle (ORC) systems operating under heat source fluctuations and intermittency," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    10. Wang, Gang & Wang, Cheng & Chen, Zeshao & Hu, Peng, 2020. "Design and performance evaluation of an innovative solar-nuclear complementarity power system using the S–CO2 Brayton cycle," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    11. Zhu, Yilin & Li, Weiyi & Sun, Guanzhong & Li, Haojie, 2018. "Thermo-economic analysis based on objective functions of an organic Rankine cycle for waste heat recovery from marine diesel engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 343-356.
    12. Liu, Yaping & Wang, Ying & Huang, Diangui, 2019. "Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle: A state-of-the-art review," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    13. Zhang, Siyuan & Liu, Xinxin & Liu, Liang & Pan, Xiaohui & Li, Qibin & Wang, Shukun & Jiao, Youzhou & He, Chao & Li, Gang, 2024. "Thermo-economic assessment and multi-objective optimization of organic Rankine cycle driven by solar energy and waste heat," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 290(C).
    14. Zhang, Cheng & Liu, Chao & Wang, Shukun & Xu, Xiaoxiao & Li, Qibin, 2017. "Thermo-economic comparison of subcritical organic Rankine cycle based on different heat exchanger configurations," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 728-741.
    15. Świerzewski, Mateusz & Kalina, Jacek & Musiał, Arkadiusz, 2021. "Techno-economic optimization of ORC system structure, size and working fluid within biomass-fired municipal cogeneration plant retrofitting project," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 281-296.
    16. Quoilin, Sylvain & Broek, Martijn Van Den & Declaye, Sébastien & Dewallef, Pierre & Lemort, Vincent, 2013. "Techno-economic survey of Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 168-186.
    17. Zhang, Ji & Hu, Xudong & Wu, Ding & Huang, Xiaohui & Wang, Xuehui & Yang, Yan & Wen, Chuang, 2023. "A comparative study on design and performance evaluation of Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) under different two-phase heat transfer correlations," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 350(C).
    18. Shi, Lingfeng & Shu, Gequn & Tian, Hua & Deng, Shuai, 2018. "A review of modified Organic Rankine cycles (ORCs) for internal combustion engine waste heat recovery (ICE-WHR)," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 95-110.
    19. Liu, Changwei & Gao, Tieyu, 2019. "Off-design performance analysis of basic ORC, ORC using zeotropic mixtures and composition-adjustable ORC under optimal control strategy," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 95-108.
    20. Alonso, Gustavo & Bilbao, Sama & Valle, Edmundo del, 2016. "Economic competitiveness of small modular reactors versus coal and combined cycle plants," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 116(P1), pages 867-879.
    21. Zhai, Huixing & An, Qingsong & Shi, Lin & Lemort, Vincent & Quoilin, Sylvain, 2016. "Categorization and analysis of heat sources for organic Rankine cycle systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 790-805.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Su, Wei & Jiao, Keqing & Jin, Xu & Liu, Zhongyan & Zhang, Xiaosong, 2025. "Performance analysis of a novel solar-assisted liquid CO2 energy storage system with flexible cooling, heating and power outputs: Energy, exergy, economic, and environmental aspects," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 324(C).
    2. Li, Liushuai & An, Dou & Xi, Huan, 2025. "Proposal and optimization of novel heat pump cycles with the Tesla turbine as an expansion device," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 340(C).
    3. Zhang, Shijie & Yu, Yujie & Yin, Jianyong & Li, Liushuai & Liu, Hang & Huo, Erguang & Huang, Rui & Wang, Shukun, 2025. "Multi-objective optimization and comprehensive assessment of CO2-based mixtures with thermal stability constraints for parabolic trough concentrated solar thermal power plants," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 341(C).
    4. Sun, Yuying & Han, Yixuan & Huo, Zhaoyi & Guo, Tingyu, 2025. "Multi-objective optimization analysis of a supercritical CO2 cycle integrated with an absorption refrigeration and organic Rankine cycle system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    5. Liu, Li & Jia, Zheng & Yuan, Junjie & Bao, Ruiqi & Luo, Haotian & Gu, Hanyang & Zhao, Pengchen, 2025. "A study of corrosion products deposition behavior in a lead-bismuth-cooled wire-wrapped rod bundle based on flow-thermophysical field parameters," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 332(C).
    6. Wang, He & Lu, Daogang & Xu, Chao & Cao, Qiong & Li, Zhen & Fan, Cheng & Lin, Manjiao, 2025. "Study on flow and heat transfer characteristics of helium-xenon mixtures in airfoil-fin PCHEs with different cross-sectional parameters," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 325(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fan, Gang & Du, Yang & Li, Hang & Dai, Yiping, 2021. "Off-design behavior investigation of the combined supercritical CO2 and organic Rankine cycle," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 237(C).
    2. Pallis, Platon & Varvagiannis, Efstratios & Braimakis, Konstantinos & Roumpedakis, Tryfonas & Leontaritis, Aris - Dimitrios & Karellas, Sotirios, 2021. "Development, experimental testing and techno-economic assessment of a fully automated marine organic rankine cycle prototype for jacket cooling water heat recovery," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    3. Du, Yadong & Hu, Chenxing & Yang, Ce & Wang, Haimei & Dong, Wuqiang, 2022. "Size optimization of heat exchanger and thermoeconomic assessment for supercritical CO2 recompression Brayton cycle applied in marine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(PD).
    4. Guo, Jia-Qi & Li, Ming-Jia & He, Ya-Ling & Xu, Jin-Liang, 2019. "A study of new method and comprehensive evaluation on the improved performance of solar power tower plant with the CO2-based mixture cycles," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).
    5. Zhu, Sipeng & Zhang, Kun & Deng, Kangyao, 2020. "A review of waste heat recovery from the marine engine with highly efficient bottoming power cycles," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    6. Park, Joo Hyun & Kim, Jinsu & Kwon, Jin Gyu, 2025. "50 kWe R1336mzz(Z) ORC power generation system for industrial waste heat recovery: System design and commissioning test results," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 323(C).
    7. Zhang, Ji & Wu, Ding & Huang, Xiaohui & Hu, Xudong & Fang, Xi & Wen, Chuang, 2024. "Comparative study on the organic rankine cycle off-design performance under different zeotropic mixture flow boiling correlations," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    8. Penkuhn, Mathias & Tsatsaronis, George, 2020. "Systematic evaluation of efficiency improvement options for sCO2 Brayton cycles," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    9. Yang, Wei & Bao, Jingjing & Liu, Hongtao & Zhang, Jun & Guo, Lin, 2023. "Low-grade heat to hydrogen: Current technologies, challenges and prospective," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    10. Wang, Chenfang & Li, Qingshan & Wang, Chunmei & Zhang, Yangjun & Zhuge, Weilin, 2021. "Thermodynamic analysis of a hydrogen fuel cell waste heat recovery system based on a zeotropic organic Rankine cycle," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    11. Li, Zhen & Lu, Daogang & Wang, Zhichao & Cao, Qiong, 2023. "Analysis on flow and heat transfer performance of SCO2 in airfoil channels with different fin angles of attack," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 282(C).
    12. Imran, Muhammad & Haglind, Fredrik & Asim, Muhammad & Zeb Alvi, Jahan, 2018. "Recent research trends in organic Rankine cycle technology: A bibliometric approach," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 81(P1), pages 552-562.
    13. Kim, Sunjin & Kim, Min Soo & Kim, Minsung, 2020. "Parametric study and optimization of closed Brayton power cycle considering the charge amount of working fluid," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    14. Daniarta, Sindu & Nemś, Magdalena & Kolasiński, Piotr, 2023. "A review on thermal energy storage applicable for low- and medium-temperature organic Rankine cycle," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(PA).
    15. Long Lyu & Wu Chen & Ankang Kan & Yuan Zhang & Song Xue & Jingbin Zeng, 2022. "Investigation of a Dual-Loop ORC for the Waste Heat Recovery of a Marine Main Engine," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-22, November.
    16. Muñoz, Marta & Rovira, Antonio & Sánchez, Consuelo & Montes, María José, 2017. "Off-design analysis of a Hybrid Rankine-Brayton cycle used as the power block of a solar thermal power plant," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 369-381.
    17. Liu, Yaqin & Xu, Jinliang & Wang, Tianze, 2025. "Comparative study on supercritical carbon dioxide cycle using air-cooler and water-cooler," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 314(C).
    18. Yang, Fubin & Cho, Heejin & Zhang, Hongguang & Zhang, Jian, 2017. "Thermoeconomic multi-objective optimization of a dual loop organic Rankine cycle (ORC) for CNG engine waste heat recovery," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 1100-1118.
    19. Ziviani, Davide & Groll, Eckhard A. & Braun, James E. & De Paepe, Michel & van den Broek, Martijn, 2018. "Analysis of an organic Rankine cycle with liquid-flooded expansion and internal regeneration (ORCLFE)," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 1092-1106.
    20. Woodland, Brandon J. & Ziviani, Davide & Braun, James E. & Groll, Eckhard A., 2020. "Considerations on alternative organic Rankine Cycle congurations for low-grade waste heat recovery," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:295:y:2024:i:c:s0360544224008752. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.