Selective Thermal Emission with Radiation and Adsorption in Annuli (STERADIAN): An Advanced Heat Exchanger Concept for Supercritical CO₂ Power Cycles

Technical Report · Sat Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/2562683· OSTI ID:2562683

McGrail, Bernard P. ^[1]; Bernacki, Bruce E. ^[1]; Ilic, Ognjen ^[2]; Loring, John S. ^[1]; Bonham, Charles C. ^[1]; Schaef, Herbert T. ^[1]; Baker, Darick ^[3]; Jenks, Jeromy W. ^[1]; Lahiri, Nabajit ^[1]

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1. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
2. Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (United States)
3. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)

One of the key limitations affecting ability to achieve the efficiency and cost saving advantages of a supercritical CO₂ (scCO₂) power cycle resides with the primary heat exchanger where costs can exceed 50% of the plant capital budget depending on design. This project established the foundational groundwork for a new type of heat exchanger optimized to take advantage of radiative heat transfer to scCO₂. Selective thermal emission coatings were designed and tested that radiated more light tuned to the 4.2 µm infrared absorption band of CO₂. Coating design utilized principles of nanophotonic bandgap theory to design a selective emitter that has: 1) low emissivity in the visible band, 2) near 100% effective emissivity in the mid-IR wavelength between 4 and 4.5 µm wavelength, and 3) strong suppression of far-IR light emission that will maximize radiative heat transfer efficiency to scCO₂. Computational fluid dynamics simulations show that an advanced heat exchanger implementing this selective thermal emitter coating is 25 to as much as 40% smaller than conventional heat exchanger designs.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 2562683
• Report Number(s): PNNL--33278
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
42 ENGINEERING
Radiation
heat exchanger
photonics
selective emitters
thermal emission