Parametric evaluation of a cascaded novel system based on biomass, solar, and SCO2 power cycle

Abstract

The Renewable energy source is pivotal to clean power generation. The present work comprises solar and biomass as leading energy sources for a sCO2/ORC-based combined power plant. A comprehensive thermodynamic performance assessment of a supercritical Brayton cycle (SBC) and organic Rankine cycle (ORC) system is performed. The system is modelled and the Mini-RefProp program is used to obtain the thermodynamic properties of the working fluids. The system's performance is quantified in terms of its net power output, thermal efficiency, and exergy efficiency. The use of solar and biomass energy sources also contributes to the sustainability of the system. The results show that the integration of the SBC and ORC cycles leads to a significant increase in the net power output and thermal efficiency of the system. Furthermore, the results show that the thermodynamic properties of the working fluids significantly affect the performance of the system. The exergy efficiency for topping cycle has achieved the highest among all the three cases i.e., 25.5% and the overall exergy efficiency i.e., 34.81%. This shows that biomass can be one of the best sources of energy source. Also, the Levelized cost of electricity was calculated for the overall system which resulted in US$8.42 kW/hr. Altogether, the study delivers significant insights into the feasibility of a unified SBC and ORC system for efficient harnessing of solar and biomass energy sources.