Simulation tools for design and analysis of CO2-based innovative energy plants

In an energy scenario where climate change and geopolitical concerns drive the energy production and utilisation towards decarbonisation strategies, the need to exploit energy sources in efficient ways as well as to manage electrification of processes, is paramount. In this context, power plants evolving supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) can be an efficient, cost-effective, and fast-response solution. Being firstly studied for nuclear applications, these cycles offer a variety of design choices and possible application that need to be analysed and evaluated to identify the best performances and the most profitable applications. Some of the tools that can be used to assess the performances of such variety of designs of these plants can be the heat and mass balances and the cost analyses to be performed upon them. Starting from the logical structure of a software tool pre-existing at the Thermochemical Power Group at the University of Genova, the TEMP-EVO tool has been developed and it is illustrated in the present dissertation. This is a tool enabling modular simulation of equipment to be assembled to obtain the desired process configuration. Once the desired layout is chosen, thermodynamic design and optimisation analyses can be performed, to evaluate performances and profitability. The tool is structured in blocks, separating the process definition, its thermodynamic resolution, and its economical evaluation. The modules developed are presented, together with the integration methods and the possible solvers that have been chosen and developed. Some applications of the tool to cycles evolving sCO2 are presented thermoeconomic results to evaluate different cycle layouts and compare solutions.