Performance analysis of solar tower power plants driven supercritical carbon dioxide recompression cycles for six different locations in Saudi Arabia

In this study, thermodynamic analysis of supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO₂) recompression Brayton cycles integrated with solar thermal tower systems was carried out. First part of the model deals with generating a surround heliostat field layout. This heliostat field is then optimized for optical performance on annual basis using an evolutionary algorithm called the differential evolution. The other part of the model deals with modeling a recompression Brayton cycle, which uses the heat collected at the central receiver through the heliostat field. The developed mathematical model was implemented for six different locations (cities) in Saudi Arabia for comparative analysis. The selected cities were Tabouk (North), Madinah (West), Dhahran (East), Riyadh (Central), Bishah (South), and Najran (South). In addition, an auxiliary heat exchanger was also added before the expansion turbine to keep the turbine inlet temperature constant and, thus, to keep the net power output uniform. The target net power output was set to be 40 MW. The findings reveal that the highest annual average heat collected was for Madinah, 938,400 kWh/day, and the second highest was for Tabouk, 933,100 kWh/day. Consequently, the least amount of annual average fuel hybridization required was 5.82% for Madinah and 6.34% for Tabouk during daytime hours.