Energy Reports 8 (2022) 322–333

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Energy Reports
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/egyr

Research paper

A concept of a supercritical CO2 Brayton and organic Rankine

combined cycle for solar energy utilization with typical geothermal as
auxiliary heat source: Thermodynamic analysis and optimization
∗
Yue Cao , Peiyu Li, Zongliang Qiao, Shaojun Ren, Fengqi Si
Key Laboratory of Energy Thermal Conversion and Control of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Environment, Southeast
University, Nanjing, 210096, China

article info a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents an investigation of a supercritical CO2 Brayton and organic Rankine (sCO2 -
Received 16 September 2021 ORC) combined cycle for solar energy utilization. This combined cycle uses typical geothermal as
Received in revised form 8 November 2021 auxiliary heat source to enhance its thermodynamic performance. Organic working fluid is preheated
Accepted 25 November 2021
by supercritical carbon dioxide, which absorbs heat from solar power tower and then expands
Available online 16 December 2021
in a turbomachinery. Then geothermal source enhances the grade of organic working fluid before
Keywords: it expanded. A solution procedure is proposed to estimate the thermodynamic performance of
Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle this combined cycle. Results show that the recompression sCO2 -ORC combined cycle has the best
Organic Rankine cycle thermodynamic performance when using CO2 - enhanced geothermal system (EGS) as auxiliary heat
Solar power tower source. The most suitable organic working fluid for CO2 -EGS is R245ca. Genetic algorithm optimization
Geothermal energy
indicates that the optimal thermal efficiency and net power of the combined cycle is 35.07% and 16.63
Thermodynamic analysis
MW, respectively, whose decision variable of split ratio is 0.559. Findings suggest that the sCO2 -ORC
combined cycle has a thermodynamic advantage utilizing the solar energy and auxiliary geothermal
energy.
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
Solar energy is of natural uncertainty and intermittent (Heidari
and Khovalyg, 2020; Jebli et al., 2021), which means that the
solar-driven power cycles have to operate under flexible con-
ditions. The supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle (sCO2 ),
which is compact and high-efficient (Liu et al., 2019), may be
a viable option to better satisfy the operation requirements of
solar energy utilization. To further improve the thermodynamic
performance of sCO2 cycle, bottoming cycles (Mishra and Singh,
2018) and auxiliary heat sources (Temiz and Dincer, 2020) are
suggested to couple with the solar-driven sCO2 cycle. In this
paper, thermodynamic analyses will be performed on the solar-
driven supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle with different bottoming
cycle and auxiliary heat source.
Most research for the sCO2 Brayton cycle using solar energy
is focused on cycle configuration selection and thermodynamic
performance optimization. Dunham and Iverson (2014) investi-
gated high-efficient power cycles for concentrated solar power
∗ Correspondence to: Key Laboratory of Energy Thermal Conversion
and Control of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, No. 2
Sipailou, Nanjing, 210096, China.
E-mail address: ycao@seu.edu.cn (Y. Cao).
systems, including sCO2 Brayton cycle and CO2 -ORC combined
cycle, where results indicated that its thermal efficiency could
be over 60% under the condition of 30 MPa and 1273 K. Novales
et al. (2019) discussed the sensitivity of thermal efficiency and
exergy efficiency of sCO2 Brayton cycle for concentrating solar
power, and it indicated that the re-compression sCO2 Brayton
cycle was sensitive with the recuperator efficiency while the
partial cooling sCO2 Brayton cycle was sensitive with the turbine
isentropic efficiency. Al-Sulaiman and Atif (2015) developed a
mathematic model for sCO2 Brayton cycles integrated with a solar
power tower, and the performance optimization for heliostat field
was conducted to match with the sCO2 Brayton cycle. Wang
et al. (2018) conducted an investigation on different sCO2 Brayton
cycles based on the multi-objective optimization. It showed that
the inter-cooling and partial cooling recompression sCO2 Brayton
cycles were the most two suitable configurations for solar power
tower systems. Yang et al. (2020) studied the off-design perfor-
mance of a solar power tower using supercritical carbon dioxide
as working fluid, and this study explained the effects between
heliostat field, thermal storage system and sCO2 Brayton power
cycle under off-design conditions. Guo et al. (2019) focused on
the sCO2 Brayton cycles using mixture as working fluid. Butane
and xenon were added in supercritical carbon dioxide to obtain
better thermodynamic performance.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2021.11.258
2352-4847/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
Y. Cao, P. Li, Z. Qiao et al. Energy Reports 8 (2022) 322–333

and supercritical carbon dioxide. Kwon et al. (2019) established

List of abbreviations the off-design performance estimation model for the printed cir-
h Enthalpy (kJ kg−1 ) cuit heat exchanger, and then proposed operation approaches for
ṁ Mass flow rate (kg s−1 ) the supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle. Moreover, simulation investi-
gations were conducted for the dynamic performance estimation
P Net power (kW)
and control strategy of solar-driven supercritical CO2 Brayton
Pr Prandtl number
cycle (Singh et al., 2013; Milani et al., 2017; Deng et al., 2019).
p Pressure (MPa) To enhance the utilization of solar energy, the supercritical
Q Heat flow rate (kW) CO2 Brayton cycle is suggested to be combined with bottom-
s Entropy (kJ kg−1 K−1 ) ing cycles, including organic Rankine cycle (ORC), transcritical
SM Solar multiple CO2 cycle (tCO2 ) and refrigerating cycle. Akbari and Mahmoudi
sr Split ratio (2014) conducted an optimization analysis for the combination
T Temperature (K) of supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle and ORC, where eight organic
working fluids were compared based on their thermodynamic
Greek letters performance. The results indicated that the ORC using RC328
ε Effectiveness of heat exchanger (%) and isobutene were the most suitable working fluids recovering
η Efficiency (%) waste heat from sCO2 cycle. Habibi et al. (2020) investigated
the performance improvement of ORC for the supercritical CO2
Subscripts Brayton cycle driven by molten salt solar power tower, and they
concluded that the ORC could increase the net power and exergy
at Atmospheric attenuation
efficiency of the combined cycle. Wang et al. (2016) analyzed
b Bottoming cycle
the sCO2 -ORC combined cycle by thermal efficiency and exergy
bl Block efficiency estimation, and an optimal system configuration was
cos Cosine proposed by employing an ORC between the sCO2 split point and
e Generator low temperature recuperator. Liang et al. (2020) proposed an op-
geo Geothermal timization procedure for the solar power tower, supercritical CO2
hel Heliostat field Brayton cycle and ORC, and results indicated that the ORC could
in Atmospheric interception increase the net power of combined cycle by 3.6–4.4%. Consider-
loss Losses of convection, heat conduction ing the similarity of thermal source parameters of solar energy,
and thermal radiation gas turbine exhaust and fuel cell, similar investigations may help
mc Main compressor understand the performance of supercritical CO2 Brayton com-
bined cycles. Sanchez et al. (2011) compared the hybrid systems
net Net power
using air and supercritical carbon dioxide as working fluid for
p Pump
molten carbonate fuel cells. Nami et al. (2017) studied the exergy
rc Re-compressor performance of a gas turbine-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle, whose
rec Recovered results showed that the exergy loss reduction was significant to
ref Specular reflectivity decrease the capital cost of the combined cycle. Manjunath et al.
s Isentropic (2018) proposed a sCO2 -tCO2 cycle to recover exhaust heat from
sh Shadow shipboard gas turbine, which had a 18% increase of combined
tot Total cycle net power. Feng et al. (2020) investigated the thermo-
tur Turbine dynamic performance of a cascaded cycle of supercritical CO2
w Cooling water Brayton cycle and Kalina cycle to utilize waste heat from diesel
engines. Wu et al. (2017) showed that the combined supercritical
Abbreviations CO2 recompression Brayton and absorption refrigeration cycle
had advantages in thermal efficiency and capital cost. Although
CPG CO2 plume geothermal
bottoming cycles are introduced for supercritical CO2 Brayton
EGS Enhanced geothermal system
cycle, most former studies still need a sCO2 pre-cooler to control
HTR High-temperature recuperator the sCO2 compressor inlet temperature.
IC-sCO2 Intercooling sCO2 Brayton cycle Auxiliary heat source may help further enhance the thermo-
LTR Low-temperature recuperator dynamic performance of the ORC bottoming cycle and the sCO2
ODP Ozone destruction indexes based combined cycle. Geothermal energy may be a viable option
ORC Organic Rankine cycle for the supercritical CO2 Brayton and ORC combined cycle. Typical
PAC-sCO2 Partial cooling sCO2 Brayton cycle geothermal sources have different initial parameters which will
PC-sCO2 Prerecompression sCO2 Brayton cycle affect the combined cycle performance. Jankowski et al. (2020)
R-sCO2 Recompression sCO2 Brayton cycle conducted a multi-objective analysis to find the effect of geother-
SR-sCO2 Sample regenerative sCO2 Brayton cycle mal water parameter on the low-temperature ORC power cycle
performance, and they concluded that the salinity of geothermal
tCO2 Transcritical CO2 cycle
water should be considered in designing ORC. Liu et al. (2017)
studied the effect of geothermal water inlet temperature on the
ORC based geothermal power cycle using R245ca as working
Several researchers have explored novel component prelim- fluid, which presented that the temperature range of 80 to 180
inary design methods to enhance the thermodynamic perfor- ◦
C is favorable for engineering applications. Besides, the CO2
mance of supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle. Teng and plume geothermal (CPG) is able to be an auxiliary heat source for
Xuan (2019) proposed a composite receiver for solar-driven su- solar energy utilization. Researchers couple the supercritical CO2
percritical CO2 Brayton cycle. Lao et al. (2019) designed a discon- Brayton cycle with the CPG, and find that the combined cycle had
tinuous fins print circuits heat exchanger between molten salt potential to combined solar energy utilization and geothermal
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Table 1 2.2. Modeling method

Outlet temperature of low-temperature recuperator TLTR,out for different
supercritical sCO2 Brayton cycles.
Modular modeling is employed to build the thermodynamic
System configuration TLTR,out (K)
models for the sCO2 -ORC combined cycles. Thus, the models
Simple regenerative sCO2 Brayton cycle 338–443
Precompression sCO2 Brayton cycle 326–359
for the sCO2 cycle, ORC and solar tower system are carried out
Recompression sCO2 Brayton cycle 332–432 separately.
Intercooling sCO2 Brayton cycle 325–366
Partial cooling sCO2 Brayton cycle 322–356
2.2.1. Supercritical CO2 cycle
The thermodynamic model of the supercritical CO2 cycle is
established based on the law of conservation of energy. The
energy utilization. The CO2 -based enhanced geothermal system output power of sCO2 turbine Ptur,sCO2 is expressed as
(EGS-CO2 ) is also employed to combine with solar energy utiliza-
tion. Jiang et al. (2017) studied a solar thermal-EGS hybrid system Ptur,sCO2 = ṁc (h1 − h2 ) (1)
and the thermodynamic analysis results showed the combined
where h1 and h2 are the enthalpies of turbine inlet and outlet,
cycle could satisfied variable operation conditions.
respectively, ṁc is the mass flow rate of supercritical carbon
Although much literature is published on sCO2 and ORC com-
dioxide.
bined cycles from the perspectives of thermodynamic analysis
and optimization, limited work has been done focusing on cas- The isentropic efficiency for the sCO2 turbine is calculated by
caded utilization of solar energy and geothermal energy. More- h1 − h2
over, auxiliary heat sources of typical geothermal are not com- ηtur,s = × 100% (2)
h1 − h2s
pared to better characterize the sCO2 -ORC combined cycle. In
the present study, a thermodynamic solution procedure is pro- The effectiveness of heat exchange for high-temperature recu-
posed to estimate the combined cycle powered by solar energy perator (HTR) is defined as
and typical geothermal energy. Besides, thermodynamic models T2 − T3
of the combined cycle are also utilized to explain the effects εHTR = × 100% (3)
of design conditions on the combined cycle performance. Then T2 − T8
a genetic algorithm optimization is conducted to balance the For low-temperature recuperator (LTR), its effectiveness of
thermal efficiency and net power of a specific combined cycle. heat exchange is calculated by
The proposed approach may assist the thermodynamic analysis ⎧T − T
3 4
⎨ T3 − T6 × 100%, (T3 − T4 ) > (T7 − T6 )
of similar energy cascaded utilization systems, and the results ⎪
⎪
from this paper will help better design the combined cycle using
supercritical carbon dioxide and organic working fluid. εLTR = T7 − T6 (4)
⎩ T − T × 100%, (T3 − T4 ) ≤ (T7 − T6 )
⎪
⎪
3 6
2. System configuration and modeling
The recovered heat in the HTR and LTR are evaluated by
2.1. System configuration
QHTR = ṁc (h2 − h3 ) = ṁc (h9 − h8 ) (5)
The supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle for solar energy utiliza-
QLTR = ṁc (h3 − h4 ) = ṁc (h7 − h6 )sr (6)
tion has different system configurations. In this paper, only five
system configurations are employed, including simple regener- where sr is the split ratio, which is defined as the ratio of main
ative sCO2 Brayton cycle (SR-sCO2 cycle), precompression sCO2 compressor inlet mass flow rate and total carbon dioxide mass
Brayton cycle (PC-sCO2 cycle), recompression sCO2 Brayton cycle flow rate, as shown below
(R-sCO2 cycle), intercooling sCO2 Brayton cycle (IC-sCO2 cycle),
partial cooling sCO2 Brayton cycle (PAC-sCO2 cycle). The outlet ṁ5
sr = (7)
temperature of low-temperature recuperator (LTR) cold side is of ṁc
322–443 K (as shown in Table 1), whose heat could be further
The main compressor and re-compressor are powered by the
recovered. It shows that the SR-sCO2 and R-sCO2 have great
potential for heat recovery. Moreover, it will be more significant sCO2 turbine, and therefore their power consumptions and isen-
when typical geothermal resources are employed as auxiliary tropic efficiencies are calculated by
heat. Considering the temperature range of geothermal auxiliary Pmc = ṁc (h6 − h5 )sr (8)
heat, the organic Rankine cycle is chosen as bottoming cycle.
Therefore, the supercritical CO2 Brayton and organic Rankine h6s − h5
ηmc,s = (9)
combined cycle (sCO2 -ORC combined cycle) is proposed to have h6 − h5
a cascaded utilization of the solar energy and geothermal energy. Prc = ṁc (1 − sr)(h7′ − h4 ) (10)
Fig. 1 presents schematic diagrams of R-sCO2 -ORC combined cy-
h7′ s − h4
cle, SR-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle, PC-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle, ηrc,s = (11)
IC-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle and PAC-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle. h7 ′ − h4
These combined cycles present: (1) A solar tower and a molten where Pmc and Prc are the power consumption of the main com-
salt energy storage subsystem are employed for solar energy pressor and re-compressor, respectively, ηmc and ηrc are the isen-
collection. (2) Different compressors and heat exchangers are tropic efficiency of the main compressor and re-compressor.
designed for five system configurations. (3) The ORC recovers heat Besides, the heat exchange between supercritical carbon diox-
from supercritical carbon dioxide at the LTR outlet, so the cooler
ide and molten salt Qs is evaluated by conservation of energy
before compressor is canceled. (4) The organic working fluid is
gradually heated by supercritical carbon dioxide and geothermal
energy from liquid to saturated vapor. Fig. 2 shows the tempera- Qs = ṁHTF (h1s − h2s ) = ṁc (h1 − h11 ) (12)
ture and entropy (T-s) diagram of the R-sCO2 -ORC combined cy-
cle, where the horizontal axes of entropy are only for supercritical where h1s and h2s are the inlet enthalpy and outlet enthalpy of
carbon dioxide and organic working fluid, respectively. molten salt, ṁHTF is the mass flow rate of molten salt.
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Fig. 1. Schematic diagrams of supercritical CO2 Brayton and organic Rankine combined cycles for solar energy and auxiliary geothermal energy utilization. (a)
R-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle, (b) SR-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle, (c) PC-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle, (d) IC-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle, (e) PAC-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle.

Therefore, the net output power of sCO2 cycle Pnet ,sCO2 is cal- 2.2.2. Organic rankine cycle
culated as follows For the organic Rankine bottoming cycle, the output power

Pnet,sCO2 = (Ptur,sCO2 − Pmc − Ppc − Prc )ηe (13) and isentropic efficiency of the ORC turbine are evaluated by

where ηe is the generator efficiency. Ptur,b = ṁb (h1b − h2b )ηe,b (14)
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Fig. 1. (continued).

h1b − h2b where h1c is the inlet enthalpy of cooling water, h0b and h0c are
ηtur,b,s = (15)
h1b − h2b,s the enthalpies of organic working fluid and cooling water at the
where h1b and h2b are the inlet enthalpy and outlet enthalpy of pinch temperature point in the ORC condenser.
ORC turbine, ṁb is the mass flow rate of the ORC bottoming cycle, The heat recovery efficiency ηrec is defined as the ratio of
ηe,b is the ORC generator efficiency. recovered heat and maximum available heat of ORC, which is
The power consumption and isentropic efficiency of the ORC expressed as
pump is calculated by ⎧
T5b − T4b
× 100%, (T5b − T4b ) > (T4 − T5 )
⎪
Pp = ṁb (h4b − h3b ) (16) ⎪
T4 − T4b
⎨
h4b,s − h3b ηrec = (21)
ηp,s = (17) ⎪ T4 − T5
h4b − h3b
⎪
⎩ × 100%, (T5b − T4b ) ≤ (T4 − T5 )
T4 − T4b
The recovered heat of organic working fluid from the sCO2
Therefore, the net power and thermal efficiency of the ORC is
cycle Qrec is calculated as follows
evaluated by
Qrec = ṁc (h4 − h5 )sr = ṁb (h5b − h4b ) (18)
Pnet,b = Ptur,b − Pp (22)
Besides, the absorbed heat from geothermal reservoir Qgeo is
Pnet,b
evaluated by ηb = (23)
Qrec + Qgeo
Qgeo = ṁg (h1g − h2g ) = ṁb (h1b − h5b ) (19)
where ṁg is the mass flow rate of geothermal working fluid, h1g 2.2.3. Solar tower system
and h2g are the inlet enthalpy and outlet enthalpy of geothermal
The heliostat field of the solar tower system is of a radial
working fluid.
cross configuration to reduce the shadow loss. Based on the
For the ORC bottoming cycle, the organic working fluid is con-
densed by cooling water, whose mass flow rate ṁw is calculated conservation of energy, the collection energy of heat absorber
by Qhel,o is calculated by

ṁw = ṁb (h0b − h3b )/(h0c − h1c ) (20) Qhel,o = Qhel,i ηhel (24)
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Table 2
Validation results for supercritical CO2 cycle of proposed thermodynamic model
and reference publication.
State point p/MPa T/K Relative error (%)
Reference Simulation
1 19.4 823.15 823.150 0
2 7.923 713.44 713.439 0.0001
3 7.844 669.69 670.679 0.1475
4 7.767 441.49 447.861 1.4423
5 7.692 305.15 305.150 0
6 20 334.25 334.249 0.0003
8 19.8 431.14 434.943 0.8743
9 19.6 668.69 669.677 0.1476

of the supercritical CO2 power cycle, as shown below

Qrec,o
SM = (27)
Qs

2.2.4. Combined cycle performance

For these sCO2 -ORC combined cycles, the sCO2 turbine and
ORC turbine generate power simultaneously. Thus, their total net
output power Ptot is evaluated by

Ptot = Pnet,sCO2 + Pnet,b (28)

The thermal efficiency of the combined cycle ηtot is calculated as
follows
Ptot
ηtot = (29)
Qs + Qgeo

Fig. 2. Thermodynamic diagram of recompression supercritical CO2 and organic
Rankine combined cycle. (a) Topping sCO2 cycle, (b) bottoming ORC cycle.
2.2.5. Validation
In this paper, the thermodynamic model of the combined cycle
is validated to ensure the reliability of the simulation results. This
model validation is conducted by comparing with the results of
Dostal et al. (2002), where a recompression sCO2 cycle is pro-
posed. First, design parameters of this reference publication are
set for the proposed thermodynamic model in this paper. Then
simulations are done for the supercritical CO2 cycle, whose results
are compared with those of the reference publication, as shown
in Table 2. It presents that the maximum relative error for the
temperature of each state point is less than 1.45%. This indicates
that the proposed model could well simulate the thermodynamic
performance of the supercritical CO2 cycle within acceptable error
range.

3. Simulation conditions and method

where Qhel,i is the input solar energy of the heliostat field, ηhel is
the efficiency of the heliostat field, which is calculated as follows
ηhel = ηcos ηsh ηbl ηat ηin ηref
where ηcos is the cosine efficiency, ηsh is the shadow efficiency,
ηbl is the block efficiency, ηat is the atmospheric attenuation
efficiency, ηin is the atmospheric interception efficiency, ηref is the
specular reflectivity.
Considering the energy losses of the heat absorber, the output
thermal power of the heat absorber Qrec ,o is evaluated by
Qrec,o = Qrec,in − Qref − Qloss
where Qref is the reflection heat loss, Qloss is the losses of convec-
tion, heat conduction and thermal radiation, Qrec ,in is the input
heat of the heat absorber which equals to the output heat of the
heliostat field Qhel,o .
Besides, the solar multiple SM is defined as the ratio of the
output thermal power of the heat absorber and the heat exchange
3.1. Simulation conditions
The sCO2 -ORC combined cycles using solar energy and
(25) geothermal energy are designed with sCO2 turbine inlet param-
eters of 20 MPa and 823.15 K, considering the issues of material
and capital cost. The other detailed simulation conditions are
listed in Table 3. It shows that the inlet conditions of the com-
pressor are set near the critical point of the carbon dioxide. As
printed circuit heat exchangers are selected, the effectiveness
of heat exchange of recuperator is as high as 95%. Besides, the
temperature difference of the heat exchanger for molten salt
(26) and supercritical carbon dioxide is assumed to be 15 K. The
molten salt is made up of 60% NaNO3 and 40% KNO3 . For the ORC
bottoming cycle, a minimum pinch temperature difference of 5 K
is assumed for ORC pre-heater and ORC evaporator.
In order to better compare the thermodynamic performance
of different combined cycles, fixed solar energy is assumed and
the mass flow rate of molten salt is set to be 1 kg/s. Based on
these, the simulation conditions for the outlet temperature of
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Table 3 Table 6
Simulation conditions for sCO2 -ORC combined cycles. Preliminary design conditions for different geothermal resources.
Item Value Item Geothermal water CPG CO2 -EGS
sCO2 turbine efficiency (%) 85 Location Songliao basin Ordos basin Gonghe basin
sCO2 turbine inlet temperature (K) 823.15 T1g /K 358 398 453
sCO2 turbine inlet pressure (MPa) 20 p1g /MPa 0.31 16 20
sCO2 compressor efficiency (%) 80 T2g /K 335 378 423
Main compressor inlet temperature (K) 308.15 ṁg /kg s−1 2.3 9 14
Main compressor inlet pressure (MPa) 7.4
Pre-compressor inlet pressure (MPa) 7.4
Heat exchange effectiveness of recuperator (%) ≤95 Table 7
Pinch temperature difference of recuperator (K) 5 Detailed conditions for organic working fluids of sCO2 -ORC combined cycles.
Split ratio 0.7 Item Geothermal water CPG CO2 -EGS
ORC turbine efficiency (%) 85
ORC pump efficiency (%) 80 Organic fluid R218 RC318 R245ca
Condensing temperature of organic working fluids (K) 298.15 Tcrit /K 345.02 388.38 447.57
Pinch temperature difference of ORC preheater (K) ≥5 pcrit /MPa 2.64 2.7775 3.9407
Pinch temperature difference of ORC evaporator (K) ≥5 ODP 0 0 0
Pinch temperature difference of ORC condenser (K) ≥5 Safety level A1 A1 A2
Inlet temperature of cooling water (K) 288.15
Generator efficiency (%) 98

the ozone destruction indexes (ODP) of these organic fluids are 0,

Table 4 which means they are environmentally-friendly. In addition, their
Outlet temperature of low-temperature recuperator for different sCO2 -ORC
safety levels present that their nontoxicity and low flammability
combined cycles.
meet the requirements of closed power cycles.
System configuration TLTR,out (K)
Simple regenerative sCO2 Brayton cycle 400.90
3.2. Solution procedure
Precompression sCO2 Brayton cycle 334.42
Recompression sCO2 Brayton cycle 398.65
Intercooling sCO2 Brayton cycle 333.67 A novel solution procedure is proposed in this paper to in-
Partial cooling sCO2 Brayton cycle 331.15 vestigate the thermodynamic performance of different sCO2 -ORC
combined cycles using solar energy and geothermal energy, as
shown in Fig. 3. Firstly, supercritical CO2 cycles are solved based
Table 5
System configuration selection of supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle for different on input parameters and solar tower system design conditions.
geothermal resources. To be specific, the sCO2 turbine and compressors are first ob-
System configuration Geothermal water CPG CO2 -EGS tained, and then the thermodynamic performance of LTR and
Simple regenerative sCO2 Brayton cycle   HTR are evaluated by iterative computations. Secondly, the ORC
Precompression sCO2 Brayton cycle  bottoming cycles are calculated according to inlet conditions of
Recompression sCO2 Brayton cycle   geothermal resources and LTR outlet parameters. Finally, the
Intercooling sCO2 Brayton cycle  combined cycle performance for each system configuration is
Partial cooling sCO2 Brayton cycle 
obtained and further comparisons are conducted. All codes of this
solution procedure are established in the platform of MATLAB,
and thermodynamic performance of supercritical carbon dioxide,
the low-temperature recuperator TLTR,out can be calculated, as organic working fluids and cooling water are obtained by NIST
summarized in Table 4. Considering the temperature range of REFPROP 9.1.
different geothermal resources, the preliminary design configu-
rations are first selected for each sCO2 -ORC combined cycle, as 4. Results and discussion
shown in Table 5. It shows that the configurations of simple
regenerative sCO2 Brayton cycle and recompression sCO2 Brayton 4.1. Thermodynamic analysis for different geothermal resources
cycle are not suitable for the application of geothermal water
resource. This is because the outlet temperature of geothermal In this section, comparisons for different geothermal resources
water resource is usually lower than 370 K. The Songliao Basin with potential system configurations are conducted to obtain
is one typical location containing geothermal water resource in the most suitable preliminary design configuration. Based on the
China, where the outlet temperature of geothermal production results of Table 5, the sCO2 -ORC combined cycles with geother-
is 358 K, as shown in Table 6. This temperature is much lower mal water as auxiliary heat source are first analyzed, whose
than the TLTR,out of simple regenerative sCO2 Brayton cycle and thermodynamic performance are shown in Table 7. As the PC-
recompression sCO2 Brayton cycle (400.90 K and 398.65 K), which sCO2 -ORC combined cycle does not have a bypass and the hot
means the supercritical carbon dioxide cannot be well cascaded carbon dioxide in its LTR has a quite high pressure, more heat
heated. Besides, thermodynamic parameters of typical CPG and could be recovered from the sCO2 cycle for this combined cycle.
CO2 -EGS in China are also listed in Table 6 Wang et al. (2020). In This is hard to match the inlet parameters of geothermal water.
following simulations, these three locations are chosen to inves- Therefore, only two system configurations are compared in Ta-
tigate the thermodynamic performance difference of geothermal ble 7. This indicates that both the IC-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle
water, CPG and CO2 -EGS. and PAC-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle could match well with the
For the ORC bottoming cycle, its working fluid should be geothermal water heat source. The IC-sCO2 -ORC combined cycle
selected based on both thermodynamic properties and safety con- could reach a higher heat recovery efficiency of 74.58%, which
siderations. To be specific, the critical temperature of organic fluid makes the ORC bottoming cycle outputs a net power of 19.56 kW.
should be approximate to the temperature of heat source. There- Besides, the evaporating pressure of R218 for the IC-sCO2 -ORC
fore, R218, RC318 and R245ca are selected for geothermal water, combined cycle (2.1 MPa) is lower. These indicate that the IC-
CPG and CO2 -EGS, respectively. Table 7 presents the detailed sCO2 -ORC combined cycle is favorable for matching the auxiliary
conditions of these three organic working fluids. It shows that heat source of geothermal water (see Table 8).
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Fig. 3. Solution procedure for sCO2 -ORC combined cycles using solar energy and geothermal energy.

Table 8 Table 9 presents the thermodynamic simulation results of

Results for thermodynamic performance of sCO2 -ORC combined cycles with
different sCO2 -ORC combined cycles with CPG as auxiliary heat
geothermal water as auxiliary heat source.
source. With the increase of evaporating pressure of RC318, the
Item Value
ORC could reach a heat recovery efficiency of 91.13% from re-
IC-sCO2 -ORC PAC-sCO2 -ORC
compression sCO2 cycle at the evaporating pressure of 2.35 MPa.
ṁc /kg s−1 1.98 1.82 Its corresponding total thermal efficiency and total net power
ṁb /kg s−1 2.79 3.72
p1b /MPa 2.1 2.4
are 30.19% and 232.2 kW, respectively. Although the SR-sCO2 -
Pnet ,sCO2 /kW 166.7 162.5 ORC combined cycle has a higher total thermal efficiency, the
Pnet ,b /kW 19.56 22.5 total net power is more important when fixed solar energy is
Pnet ,tot /kW 186.26 185 assumed. Besides, it indicates the increase of total net power
ηb /% 6.33 6.87
ηtot /% 28.53 28.35
could be as high as 44.13%. Therefore, it seems that the R-sCO2 -
ηrec /% 74.58 74.39 ORC combined cycle could better match with the CPG auxiliary
heat source. Moreover, similar simulations are done to present
the best system configuration for sCO2 -ORC combined cycle with
CO2 -EGS as auxiliary heat source, as shown in Table 10. Results
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Table 9
Results for thermodynamic performance of sCO2 -ORC combined cycles with CPG
as auxiliary heat source.
Item Value
SR-sCO2 -ORC R-sCO2 -ORC
ṁc /kg s−1 1.80 2.49
ṁb /kg s−1 3.95 3.84
p1b /MPa 2.4 2.35
Pnet ,sCO2 /kW 147.7 161.1
Pnet ,b /kW 71.6 71.1
Pnet ,tot /kW 219.3 232.2
ηb /% 11.57 11.76
ηtot /% 34.27 30.19
ηrec /% 91.35 91.13

Table 10
Results for thermodynamic performance of sCO2 -ORC combined cycles with
CO2 -EGS as auxiliary heat source.
Item Value
SR-sCO2 -ORC R-sCO2 -ORC Fig. 4. Results for thermodynamic performance of ORC with different
ṁc /kg s−1 1.80 2.49 evaporating pressure.
ṁb /kg s−1 3.14 3.05
p1b /MPa 3.25 3.25
Pnet ,sCO2 /kW 147.7 161.1
Pnet ,b /kW 165.4 162.2
Pnet ,tot /kW 313.1 323.3
ηb /% 17.84 17.75
ηtot /% 29.04 30
ηrec /% 91.33 91.13

indicate that the sCO2 -ORC combined cycle has a thermal effi-
ciency and total net power of 30% and 323.3 kW, respectively,
when choosing a recompression system configuration. This total
net power is doubled comparing with the power cycle without
an ORC bottoming cycle. In addition, the evaporating pressure
of R245ca is 3.25 MPa. In general, the R-sCO2 -ORC is selected to
utilize the geothermal source of CO2 -EGS.
Former thermodynamic simulations present that the sCO2 -
ORC combined cycle is favorable to recover heat from geothermal
resources of hot water, CPG and CO2 -EGS. However, hot-water
Fig. 5. Results for thermodynamic performance of combined cycle with different
geothermal resources in China are of a medium-low temperature, inlet temperature of main compressor.
which limits the application of sCO2 -ORC combined cycles. Al-
though deep brine reservoirs are wide distributed in China, few of
them are suitable to store CO2 for CPG applications. Moreover, the
geothermal resource would also first increase and then decrease
production temperature of CPG is lower than that of EGS, which
with the variation of evaporating pressure. In general, the optimal
decrease the potential of large-scale exploitation of CPG. Among
evaporating pressure is 3.4 MPa for the ORC using R245ca as
these geothermal resources, the EGS is the most viable solution
working fluid.
for CO2 sequestration and geothermal utilization in China. In
general, the CO2 -EGS is favorable for sCO2 -ORC combined cycles.
4.3. Thermodynamic analysis for combined cycle
4.2. Thermodynamic analysis for ORC
The ORC using R245ca as working fluid has an optimal evapo-
The evaporating pressure of organic working fluid has a signif- rating pressure of 3.4 MPa. Assuming a constant output power of
icant influence on the thermodynamic performance of the ORC. 10 MW for topping sCO2 cycle, the thermodynamic performance
The organic working fluid may reach its two-phase zone at the of sCO2 -ORC combined cycle could be obtained for different de-
inlet of ORC turbine when its evaporating pressure is approxi- sign conditions. Fig. 5 presents the results for the thermodynamic
mate to its critical pressure. It would shorten the lifetime of the performance combined cycle with the variation of inlet tem-
ORC turbine. Therefore, this issue should be considered when perature of main compressor. The combined cycle net power
selecting the ORC evaporating pressure. Fig. 4 shows the effect decreases with the increase of Tcom while its total efficiency shows
of evaporating pressure on the thermodynamic performance of an opposite variation trend. This is because the low-pressure
the ORC. Although the ORC efficiency increases with the evap- side of LTR and organic working fluid side of pre-heater have
orating pressure, the ORC net power first increases and then higher outlet temperatures, which leads to a decrease of mass
decreases at the same condition. Moreover, the net power reaches flow rate of R245ca. It also indicates that the ORC net power and
its maximum at a pressure of 3.4 MPa. This is because that the required geothermal water will decline with the increase of outlet
enthalpy of organic working fluid at the ORC turbine inlet has temperature of main compressor.
a similar variation trend, when the evaporating pressure is near The variation of inlet pressure of main compressor on the com-
the critical pressure. Thus, it seems that the recovered heat of bined cycle performance is illustrated in Fig. 6. It indicates that
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Y. Cao, P. Li, Z. Qiao et al.
Fig. 6. Results for thermodynamic performance of combined cycle with different
inlet pressure of main compressor.
Fig. 7. Variations of temperatures of combined cycle under conditions of
different inlet pressure of main compressor.
both the combined cycle net power and total efficiency vary non-
monotonously. To be specific, the combined cycle net power first
has a rapid increase, and then followed by a U-shape variation.
This is caused by the variations of temperature and mass flow
rate of supercritical carbon dioxide at the LTR outlet. It indicates
that the outlet temperature of LTR T4 is the main reason for this
variation when the inlet pressure of main compressor p5 is less
than 11.2 MPa. However, the mass flow rate of the supercritical
carbon dioxide at the LTR outlet becomes more significance to
influence the combined cycle net power when p5 is over 11.2
MPa. Fig. 7 shows the variations of corresponding temperatures of
the combined cycle under the similar conditions. It indicates that
both T4 and T5b have a minimum. When p5 is less than 11.2 MPa,
the mass flow rate of R245ca first increases and then declines
due to the variation trend of T5b . When p5 increases from 11.2
MPa, the power ratio of the topping cycle increases, which results
in a greater mass flow rate of R245ca. In general, the mass flow
rate of R245ca shows a complex variation trend of three sections,
as well as the ORC net power and combined cycle net power.
Considering the increase of required solar energy, the combined
cycle efficiency has an opposite variation trend as shown in Fig. 6.
Fig. 8 illustrates the variations of combined cycle performance
with different split ratios. The combined cycle efficiency has a
maximum with the increase of split ratio while the combined
cycle net power reaches a minimum under the same variation
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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 322–333
Fig. 8. Variations of thermodynamic performance of combined cycle with
variable split ratio.
trend. It means that the variation of mass flow rate of working
fluid R245ca results in such variation trend. When the split ratio
is less than 0.6, the net power ratio of topping cycle in the
combined cycle rises with the increase of split ratio, and therefore
the mass flow rates of supercritical carbon dioxide and R245ca
decrease at the same time. When the split ratio is greater than
0.6, its increase may enlarge the rate of heat transfer in the pre-
heater, which leads to an increase of mass flow rate of R245ca.
Thereby, the mass flow rate of R245ca first increases and then
decreases with the variation of split ratio, which finally results in
the parabolic variation trend of thermodynamic performance of
combined cycle.
The effect of s-CO2 turbine inlet pressure on the thermody-
namic performance of the combined cycle is presented in Fig. 9.
It indicates that the combined cycle efficiency is larger with a
higher s-CO2 turbine inlet pressure p1 while the net power of
combined cycle shows an opposite variation trend. This is rea-
sonable because the mass flow rate of R245ca decreases based on
the proposed design procedure. To be specific, the net power ratio
of topping cycle in the combined cycle increases with p1 , which
results in a lower mass flow rate of supercritical carbon dioxide.
Therefore, it seems that the outlet temperature of ORC side in
the pre-heater T5b increases with p1 . It will lead to the decrease
trend of ORC net power and combined cycle net power when p1
increases. Moreover, the mass flow rate of required geothermal
energy decreases with the decline of mass flow rate of R245ca. In
general, the combined cycle efficiency shows an increase trend
with the increase of s-CO2 turbine inlet pressure.
4.4. Performance optimization of combined cycle
Thermodynamic simulation results show that the combined
cycle efficiency has an opposite variation trend with the com-
bined cycle net power. It indicates that this variation is related to
the utilization of geothermal energy. To be specific, the increase
of combined cycle net power is due to the excess consumption
of geothermal energy. Therefore, a performance optimization is
conducted for the combined cycle efficiency based on the ge-
netic algorithm (GA), which may help find a balance between
combined cycle efficiency and net power.
Considering the combined cycle efficiency reaches its maxi-
mum with the variation of split ratio, therefore the split ratio is
selected as the decision variable, whose search range is 0.5 to
0.9. When the inlet temperature of main compressor and inlet
pressure of s-CO2 turbine change, the combined cycle efficiency
Y. Cao, P. Li, Z. Qiao et al.
Fig. 9. Effect of s-CO2 turbine inlet pressure on thermodynamic performance of
combined cycle.
Table 11
Results for performance optimization of sCO2 -ORC combined cycle with CO2 -EGS
as auxiliary heat source.
Item
sr
Pnet ,sCO2 /MW
Pnet ,b /MW
Ptot /MW
ηtot /%
ηrec /%
shows a monotonous variation trend. Although the effect of inlet
pressure of main compressor on the thermodynamic performance
of combined cycle is complex, the maximum peak reaches near
the critical pressure of carbon dioxide. Thereby, the design pa-
rameters of these three conditions are chosen to be 315.5 K, 20
MPa and 7.4 MPa.
The performance optimization for combined cycle efficiency
−
→ −
→
could be described as Maximizeηtot ( X ), where X is the decision
−
→
variable and could be expressed as X = sr, whose search range
is expressed as sr ∈ [0.5, 0.9]. Moreover, the population size and
stop generation for the GA optimization are set to be 50 and 200,
respectively. The mutation probability is selected as 0.01 while
the other parameters use default values.
Table 11 presents the optimization results for the combined
cycle when the net power of topping sCO2 cycle is designed
to be 10 MW. It indicates that the combined cycle efficiency
could reach 35.07% when the split ratio is 0.559. Under this
design condition, the ORC could absorb 90.54% thermal energy
from supercritical carbon dioxide. Moreover, its corresponding
net power of the combined cycle is 16.63 MW, which increases
by 66.3% comparing with the single sCO2 cycle. It seems that the
employed ORC bottoming cycle is a viable option to enhance the
power generation capacity of the combined cycle.
Results from this study indicate that the proposed sCO2 -ORC
combined cycle has thermodynamic advantage in cascaded uti-
lizing of solar energy and geothermal energy. Besides three loca-
tions selected in the former analysis, the solar energy in China is
rich and widely distributed in Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Tibet and
Northeast China (over 1400 kWh/m2 ). It matches up well with
the distribution of basins and plateaus containing geothermal
resources. Therefore, it seems that the application prospect of
the proposed sCO2 -ORC combined cycle is hopeful and its poten-
tial scale is considerable. Considering the temperature range of
geothermal production, the proposed sCO2 -ORC combined cycle
Energy Reports 8 (2022) 322–333
should be designed with suitable configuration. We caution that
the application patterns of sCO2 -ORC combined cycle may be
quite different, and further investigations should be conducted.
The thermodynamic analysis and optimization results obtained
in this study may help researchers better explore the cascaded
utilization of solar energy and geothermal energy.
5. Conclusions
Thermodynamic analysis was performed for a supercritical
CO2 Brayton and organic Rankine combined cycle for solar en-
ergy utilization with typical geothermal as auxiliary heat source.
Based on the simulations conducted in this study, the following
conclusions may be drawn:
(1) The sCO2 -ORC combined cycle is viable to use auxiliary
heat from different geothermal resources. The most suit-
able working fluid for auxiliary heat sources of geothermal
water, CPG and CO2 -EGS are R218, RC318 and R245ca,
respectively. Considering the geothermal resources dis-
tributed in China, the CO2 -EGS is more favorable for sCO2 -
ORC combined cycles.
Value (2) The thermal efficiency and net power for the sCO2 -ORC
0.559 combined cycle with CO2 -EGS as auxiliary heat source
10 show an opposite variation trend with the variation of
6.63
16.63
main compressor inlet temperature. The split ratio has
35.07 a parabolic effect on the thermodynamic performance of
90.54 the combined cycle while the effect of s-CO2 turbine inlet
pressure is monotonous.
(3) For the sCO2 -ORC combined cycle with a topping cycle net
power of 10 MW, it has an optimal split ratio of 0.559.
Its corresponding combined cycle efficiency and net power
are 35.07% and 16.63 MW, respectively. It indicates that
the sCO2 -ORC combined cycle has an advantage over ther-
modynamic performance utilizing the solar energy and
auxiliary geothermal energy.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Yue Cao: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writ-
ing - original. Peiyu Li: Investigation, Methodology, Software.
Zongliang Qiao: Formal analysis, Validation. Shaojun Ren: Soft-
ware, Visualization. Fengqi Si: Conceptualization, Writing – re-
view & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support by
the National Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China (No.
BK20210240).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be found
online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2021.11.258.
332
Y. Cao, P. Li, Z. Qiao et al.
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