Study of a Supercritical CO2 Turbine With TIT of 1350 K for Brayton Cycle With 100 MW Class Output: Aerodynamic Analysis of Stage 1 Vane

Abstract

This study seeks to design the aerodynamic features a first stage vane for a 100 MW class supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle turbomachine. For a turbine inlet temperature of 1350 K, the recuperated configuration is found to provide the highest cycle efficiency, and the corresponding cycle parameters are then used to design the turbine stages. A 6-stage turbine is selected and the first stage is designed following a one-dimensional mean line approach. Initial mean line turbomachine parameters (work coefficient and flow coefficient) are selected to provide high thermodynamic efficiency and simple radial equilibrium equation principles. Turning loss correlations are utilized to define and optimize hub and casing velocity triangle parameters. Typical turbomachinery characteristic parameters are used to compare the carbon dioxide turbine with typical air combustion turbines. Detailed aerodynamic analysis is performed on a complete three-dimensional model of the vane flow field using a commercial computational fluid dynamics code, STAR-CCM+. Actual properties of the working fluid are input to the model from the REFPROP database provided by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The detailed flow field is computed, from which aerodynamic loss coefficients are calculated. The computer model confirms that the design is successful in turning supercritical carbon dioxide at the prescribed angle and pressure. However, results of the real fluid simulation show that aerodynamic losses caused the stage efficiency to be about 4% below the design target.