Concentrating Solar Power - Essay Example

The Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle is being investigated on how it produces its energy. The cycle is ideal because it is easy to be transported from one location to another and it can also be effective in reducing costs because it uses very technical turbo machineries. Its ability to achieve efficiency is brought by the manner in which the supercritical CO2 behaves when it is near critical points. The high power density that the supercritical CO2 manages to achieve is the composition of the fluid that it has in the turbo machinery is of high density too, an approximate of 60% the water density at the inlet of the compressor (Ma & Turchi, 2011).

Investigations for the supercritical CO2 cycle is being done Sandia and its contractor, Baarber Nicholas Inc. because of the cycle has a high efficiency in temperatures between 400 C and 750 C. the investigation is being done in phases of a development program in the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy and Sandia National Labs. The main objective of the investigation is to realize the technology impact s of the Supercritical CO2 cycle. The first phase which is also called the first loop of the investigation is a compression loop that will be done using motor to run the radial Supercritical CO2 compressor.

The objective of this phase of the investigation will be: The type of technology that will be required to bear the weight, technology for sealing, bear gas-foil and how to counter the rotor wind age losses which are required for the cycle to be able to reach its effectiveness and how it reduces the costs which are its main aims. The second phase of the investigation called the second loop that has been designed is a megawatt heater-class closed Superscript CO2 Brayton cycle. This process is called the ‘re-compression’.

In this phase the cycle will show how it will be used in sources of