A comprehensive investigation on the design and off-design performance of supercritical carbon dioxide power system based on the small-scale lead-cooled fast reactor

Abstract Nuclear energy is a kind of stable, controllable and cleaner energy without massive discharge of pollutant. A comprehensive investigation on the design and off-design performance of supercritical carbon dioxide power system is conducted for the small-scale lead-cooled fast reactor in this paper. A suitable design operating condition is determined based on the system thermodynamic model and exergoeconomic model in the design stage. The off-design condition models of turbine, compressor and heat exchangers are established. Five kinds of off-design control strategies and their relationship with cleaner production and sustainable development are studied under different grid loads conditions. Results show that the system thermal efficiency can reach upto 32.18% with the optimal total product unit cost of 21.33$⋅GJ−1 in the design stage. A designed centrifugal compressor based on the demonstrated Two-zone model displays good aerodynamic performance and a wide off-design operating range. The off-design performance analysis exhibits that all control strategies can complete the adjustment of power output over a range of 10%–100%. Inventory control is the best control strategy. Cleaner production coefficient decreases with the grid load for all control strategies, and this research can provide references for cleaner production and promote the sustainable development of society effectively.