Abstract
Supercritical CO2 Rankine cycles are investigated for geothermal power plants. The system of equations that describe the thermodynamic cycle is solved using a Newton-Rhapson method. This approach allows a high computational efficiency of the model when thermophysical properties of the working fluid depend strongly on the temperature and pressure. Numerical simulation results are presented for different cycle configurations in order to assess the influences of heat source temperature, waste heat rejection temperatures and internal heat exchanger design on cycle efficiency. The results show that thermodynamic cycle efficiencies above 10% can be attained with the supercritical brayton cycle while lower efficiencies can be attained with the transcritical CO2 Rankine cycle.
