Experimental Performance Analysis of Supercritical CO2 Thermodynamic Cycle Powered by Solar Energy

The interests in using carbon dioxide as working fluid increase since the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols were made. In this paper, a complete effort was made to study the performance Of CO2 Rankine cycle powered by solar energy experimentally. The system utilizes evacuated solar collectors to convert CO2 into high-temperature supercritical state, used to produce electrical energy and thermal energy, which could be used for air conditioning and hot water supply and so on. The system performances were tested not only in summer, but also in winter; not only in sunny day, but also in cloudy day. The interest of the paper is the solar collector efficiency, because the absorbed heat quantity in the collector can be utilized for power generation and heat supply and other useful outputs. The results show that annually-averaged solar collector efficiency was measured at about 60.4%. The study shows the potential of the application of the solar powered CO2 cycle as a distributed power/heat generation system.