Power Generation with Renewable Energy and Advanced Supercritical CO2 Thermodynamic Power Cycles: A Review

Supercritical CO2 (S-CO2) thermodynamic power cycles have been considerably investigated in the applications of fossil fuel and nuclear power generation systems, considering their superior characteristics such as compactness, sustainability, cost-effectiveness, environmentally friendly working fluid, and high thermal efficiency. They can be potentially integrated and applied with various renewable energy systems for low-carbon power generation such that extensive studies in these areas have also been conducted substantially. However, there is a shortage of reviews that specifically concentrate on the integrations of S-CO2 with renewable energy encompassing biomass, solar, geothermal, and waste heat. It is thus necessary to provide an update and overview of the development of S-CO2 renewable energy systems and identify technology and integration opportunities for different types of renewable resources. Correspondingly, this paper not only summarizes the advantages of CO2 working fluid, design layouts of S-CO2 cycles, and classifications of renewable energies to be integrated but also reviews the recent research activities and studies carried out worldwide on advanced S-CO2 power cycles with renewable energy. Moreover, the performance and development of various systems are well grouped and discussed.