Nuclear Engineering and Design 245 (2012) 223232

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Nuclear Engineering and Design

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Potential advantages of coupling supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle to water cooled

small and medium size reactor
Ho Joon Yoon a,b,1,2 , Yoonhan Ahn a,1 , Jeong Ik Lee a,b, , Yacine Addad b,2
a
Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology 373-1 Guseong-dong Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-701, South Korea
b
Department of Nuclear Engineering, Khalifa University of Science, Technology & Research (KUSTAR). P.O. Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2 ) Brayton cycle is being considered as a favorable candidate for the
Received 22 August 2011 next generation nuclear reactors power conversion systems. Major benets of the S-CO2 Brayton cycle
Received in revised form 5 January 2012 compared to other Brayton cycles are: (1) high thermal efciency in relatively low turbine inlet temper-
Accepted 12 January 2012
ature, (2) compactness of the turbomachineries and heat exchangers and (3) simpler cycle layout at an
equivalent or superior thermal efciency. However, these benets can be still utilized even in the water-
cooled reactor technologies under special circumstances. A small and medium size water-cooled nuclear
reactor (SMR) has been gaining interest due to its wide range of application such as electricity generation,
seawater desalination, district heating and propulsion. Another key advantage of a SMR is that it can be
transported from one place to another mostly by maritime transport due to its small size, and sometimes
even through a railway system. Therefore, the combination of a S-CO2 Brayton cycle with a SMR can
reinforce any advantages coming from its small size if the S-CO2 Brayton cycle has much smaller size
components, and simpler cycle layout compared to the currently considered steam Rankine cycle. In this
paper, SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor), a 330 MWth integral reactor developed
by KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Institute) for multipurpose utilization, is considered as a potential candi-
date for applying the S-CO2 Brayton cycle and advantages and disadvantages of the proposed system will
be discussed in detail. In consideration of SMART condition, the turbine inlet pressure and size of heat
exchangers are analyzed by using in-house code developed by KAISTKhalifa University joint research
team. According to the cycle evaluation, the maximum cycle efciency under 310 C is 30.05% at 22 MPa
of the compressor outlet pressure and 36% of ow split ratio (FSR) with 82 m3 of total heat exchanger
volume while the upper bound of the total cycle efciency is 37% with ideal components within 310 C.
The total volume of turbomachinery which can afford 330 MWth of SMR is less than 1.4 m3 without casing.
All the obtained results are compared to the existing SMART system along with its implication to other
existing or conceptual SMRs in terms of overall performance in detail.
2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction into the spotlight with an emergence of Gen-IV reactor systems.

The steam-Rankine cycle was the most suitable power conver-
sion system for a water cooled reactor for more than 60 years. It
has demonstrated a good efciency and system reliability when
the reactor operating temperature is below 350 C. Nowadays, gas
Brayton cycles, especially supercritical CO2 (S-CO2 ) cycle, come
Corresponding author at: Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering,
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology 373-1 Guseong-dong Yuseong-
gu, Daejeon, 305-701, South Korea. Tel.: +82 42 350 3829/+971 0 2 5018519;
fax: +82 42 350 3810/+971 0 2 4472442.
E-mail addresses: yunhojun@kaist.ac.kr, hojoon.yoon@kustar.ac.ae (H.J. Yoon),
yh.ahn@kaist.ac.kr (Y. Ahn), jeongiklee@kaist.ac.kr, jeongik.lee@kustar.ac.ae
(J.I. Lee), yacine.addad@kustar.ac.ae (Y. Addad).
1
Tel.: +82 42 350 3829; fax: +82 42 350 3810.
2
Tel.: +971 0 2 5018519; fax: +971 0 2 4472442.
As various coolants such as helium, carbon dioxide and sodium
are considered for Gen-IV reactor systems, the maximum operat-
ing temperature of these reactor systems is now increased above
350 C to achieve higher efciency than the past. In the case of high
temperature reactors over 500 C, the S-CO2 cycle has been consis-
tently conrmed that it will demonstrate better efciency than the
(super-heated) steam-Rankine cycle or even than the helium Bray-
ton cycle at equal operating temperature. The S-CO2 cycle also has
a simple layout and relatively smaller component size compared to
other power conversion cycles with the help of printed circuit heat
exchanger (PCHE) technology. These advantages may result in low-
ering the capital cost and overcoming any physical size restriction.
These advantages can also bring a reduction to the construction
period and make S-CO2 cycle economically more feasible (Dostal
et al., 2004).

0029-5493/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.nucengdes.2012.01.014
224 H.J. Yoon et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 245 (2012) 223232

Brayton cycle) will be discussed with main parameters like cycle

Nomenclature efciency and the size of components in detail.

AR blade aspect ratio

CL lift coefcient
c chord length of blade
Deq equivalent diffusion ratio
f function from the radial equilibrium equation
h blade height
Hte tailing-edge boundary layer shape factor
S pitch length
tte tailing-edge blade thickness
Y energy loss coefcient for turbine
Z loading factor
relative angle
 Stagger angle
 blade solidity
 momentum thickness
pressure loss coefcient for compressor
In recent years, a small and medium size reactor (SMR) is gain-
ing attention from the technical community in parallel with Gen-IV
reactor systems. A SMR which has its capacity around 50300 MWth
is consisted of small and modularized components. Comparing to
conventional large capacity reactors, these smaller in sizes bring
high mobility and a reduction in construction period. Further-
more, slightly lower efciency of SMRs can be compensated by
various utilizations of nuclear energy like seawater desalination,
district heating and propulsion. However, due to these charac-
teristics of SMRs, coupling SMRs to the S-CO2 cycle can enhance
the existing advantages of SMRs, such as reduction in size, capi-
tal cost, construction period and so forth. One of the examples for
SMRs is SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor), a
330 MWth integral reactor being developed by KAERI (Korea Atomic
Energy Institute) for multipurpose utilization, which incorporated
all the latest safety features of the pressurized water reactor tech-
nology into the design as well as utilizing new technologies such as
passive safety, system simplication and modularization, innova-
tions in manufacturing and installation (Lee, 2010). In this paper,
SMART is considered as a potential candidate for applying the S-
CO2 Brayton cycle to improve the existing advantages of SMR,
and potential advantages of the combined system (SMART + S-CO2
2. Backgrounds
2.1. Various types of small and medium size reactors
As the nuclear power plant becomes larger, the initial invest-
ment to construct a large plant increases which results in higher
nancial risk for a business entity with limited resources. Most
developing countries which do not have experience of building the
nuclear power plant or countries with small grid size cannot eas-
ily afford the large size nuclear power plants. Therefore, they are
becoming more interested in a SMR technology which has less risk
on nancial side and at the same time involves less perturbation to
their original electricity grid.
A SMR produces electricity of 10100 MWe . As more and more
attention is given to a SMR, each nuclear nation around the world is
researching and designing various types of reactors. The SMRs can
be classied with their operating coolants such as water, helium,
sodium and so on. Table 1 shows several light water typed SMRs
currently under development in various countries. Some reactors
are based on conventional nuclear power plant technologies with
some modications and adjustments. Other reactors are based on
nuclear propulsion technology such as nuclear submarine, aircraft
carrier, icebreaker and barge (Kim, 2010). Developing status varies
from conceptual design stage to license approval stage.
2.2. SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor)
KAERI is developing SMART for various purposes for nuclear
energy application. As Fig. 1 shows, the principal feature of SMART
is an integrated system which all the components of the primary
system that can be potentially sources of accidents were removed
and integrated in to the primary pressure vessel by adopting a cas-
sette type steam generator. SMART can be utilized not only for
electricity production but also for desalination, and district heating.
The thermal power of SMART is now 330 MWth ; if it only produces
electricity, its electricity generation capacity is around 100 MWe .
If it combines electric generation with desalination, it can produce
90 MWe of electricity and 40,000 tons of fresh water daily. KAERI
expects one SMART reactor can supply the electricity and water
for a 100,000-person-living city (Lee, 2010). The operating range of

Table 1
Light water reactor typed SMRs under development in nuclear nations.

Model Developer/nation Planned deployment MWe Status

CAREM CNEA & INVAP/Argentina Northwestern Formosa 27 Completion of conceptual design,

Province of Argentina thermo-hydraulic, performance test.
Plan to build a prototype
IRIS Westinghouse/USA After shut-down of IRIS project 200 Under development
Under development of SMR based on AP1000.
KLT-40 OKBM/Russia Under construction near to 35 Proven by icebreaker
Vilyuchinsk/complete date (expect): 2012 Plan to use a different purpose.
MRX JAERI/Japan 30100 Under development
mPower Babcock & Wilcox/USA Clinch River Breeder Reactor in Oak Ridge 125 Under NRC pre-application
License approval: 2012
Constructing date: 2015
Domestic supply of components
NuScale Nuscale Power/USA 45 Under NRC pre-application
License approval: 2012
Operating date: 2018
NP-300 Technicatome (Areva)/France Developed for submarine power supply 100300 Development completion for
submarine power supply
SMART KAERI/Korea 100 Applied for DA: 2010
Plan of license approval: 2012
VK-300 Atomenergoproekt/Russia Kola and Primorskaya in the far east/Start 300 BWR type. Plan to operate 2017-2029
operating 20172020
 H.J. Yoon et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 245 (2012) 223232
Fig. 1. SMART reactor developed by KAERI (Lee et al., 2009).
SMART is as same as conventional PWR, which is 315 C and 15 MPa
at primary side. It has cassette typed steam generator having 59 m3
volumes inside an integrated loop.
2.3. Supercritical CO2 (S-CO2 ) Brayton cycle
A Brayton cycle operating uid is at single phase (mostly gas)
and is consisted of compressors, heat exchangers, and turbines.
The Brayton cycle is generally used in gas turbine technologies
for power generation purpose or aircraft propulsion, which is
generally an open cycle. However, for a nuclear application the
closed Brayton cycle is necessary to reduce risks of public exposed
by an accidental release of radioactivity from a nuclear power
plant.
During the development of the next generation reactor tech-
nologies the helium Brayton cycle has been the most studied gas
Brayton cycle. However, to gain economy, it requires over 900 C
of high operating temperature, which is suited for high tempera-
ture heat source application. Under this condition, most structural
materials face signicant challenge to have reliable performances.
If any cycle can be competitive in a wide range of operating temper-
ature with reasonable efciency, it can be applied not only to the
next generation reactors but also to the current reactor systems as
well (Dostal et al., 2004).
In 1967, Feher compared several uids such as ammonia, car-
bon dioxide, water for the application of the supercritical uid cycle
and found out that CO2 is the most appropriate candidate in a view
of moderate temperature range, chemical stability and corrosive-
ness (Feher, 1967). Dostal analyzed several CO2 characteristics and
noticed that the density is high and the compressibility is low near
the critical point. Therefore, if the cycle is composed to take advan-
tage of these characteristics, the total thermal efciency becomes
higher because the work in a compressor decreases and the work
output from a turbine increases. However, the specic heat changes
dramatically and that inuences the inlet and exit temperatures
of heat exchangers, therefore a special consideration of the heat
exchanger design is required (Dostal et al., 2004).
Reviewing the past study of S-CO2 cycle, recompressing
cycle had been selected as the most promising option. Fig. 2 is
225
Fig. 2. The cycle efciency comparison reconstructed from works of Dostal et al.
reconstructed from Dostals works. It shows efciencies of super-
heated steam cycle, supercritical steam cycle, helium Brayton
cycle with two inter-coolers and supercritical CO2 recompression
cycle.
The advantages and identied issues for coupling the S-CO2
cycle to SMRs are:
(1) High efciency: Many researchers compared the S-CO2 cycle
efciency under high temperature condition for the next gen-
eration reactors. As Fig. 2 shows, S-CO2 cycle always shows
higher efciency than selected helium cycle and comparable
efciency with superheated steam cycle in certain tempera-
ture range (Dostal et al., 2004). However, one point that has
to be stressed in Fig. 2 is that below 350 C there is no calcu-
lated efciency for comparison. Since our interest is in the range
of 310 C (core outlet temperature of SMART or less for other
water cooled SMRs), an analysis for estimating the efciency is
necessary since the trend of efciency with respect to turbine
inlet temperature shows a non-linear behavior.
(2) Compactness of turbomachinery: S-CO2 cycle that shows high
efciency does not need large components such as low pres-
sure turbines in a steam cycle. From Ref. Dostal et al. (2004),
it was already demonstrated that the size of a turbine in the
S-CO2 cycle is the smallest compared to those of steam and
helium cycles. Because the S-CO2 cycle has higher operating
pressure than the steam cycle, its uid density is high and its
turbine shows very compact size as much as one tenth of a
steam cycle turbine. As the uid is compressed near the crit-
ical point, the size of a compressor is much smaller than that
of a helium cycle compressor and becomes comparable with a
pump in the steam cycle. In summary, although the S-CO2 cycle
operates with supercritical gas, the size of turbomachinery is
very compact. However, the advantage of turbomachinery sizes
have to be re-calculated and veried for the case of coupling
the S-CO2 cycle to a SMR, since the turbine inlet tempera-
ture has changed which results in different cycle operating
conditions.
226 H.J. Yoon et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 245 (2012) 223232
Fig. 3. The layout of S-CO2 recompressing Brayton cycle.
3. S-CO2 cycle coupled with SMART
3.1. Cycle layout and analysis method
This study will be mainly based on the S-CO2 recompressing
cycle coupled to SMART as shown in Fig. 3. In the cycle, S-CO2
ows to a turbine after absorbing heat from the reactor through
IHX (intermediate heat exchanger) (point 1). After generating elec-
tricity, the uid goes through high temperature recuperator (HTR)
and low temperature recuperator (LTR) (points 24) and the ow
is divided: one goes to a precooler (PC) where the remaining heat
is rejected to the surrounding and the other goes to a recompress-
ing compressor (points 48). The reason why the ow is sent to
a recompressing compressor is to save rejected heat and increase
the total thermal efciency of the cycle. After the precooler, S-CO2
goes to the main compressor (points 56). Then, the uid receives
heat from the low temperature recuperator (point 7) and two ows
merge before entering the high temperature recuperator (points
89). After the high temperature recuperator, the uid is trans-
ported to the reactor (point 10) and the total process begins all
over again.
In order to assess the S-CO2 recompressing cycle coupled to
SMART an in-house code developed by KAIST (Korea Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology) research team (Jeong et al.,
2010) was modied to estimate the proposed system perfor-
mance. This code has several subroutines for each component
such as a turbine, a compressor and a heat exchanger. This
code can optimize cycle operating conditions for given layout
by maximizing thermal efciency of the cycle. The total mass
ow rate of the cycle is determined from the calculated tem-
perature and pressure of each component. Since the detailed
structure and the verication of the cycle code were already well
summarized in Ref. Jeong et al. (2010), it will not be repeated here in
detail.
Even though the turbomachineries in the S-CO2 cycle are
expected to be compact, the volume of S-CO2 heat exchangers can
be larger compared to water heat exchangers due to: (1) inherently
less heat transfer capability of the uid itself, (2) single phase heat
transfer shows smaller heat transfer capability than two phase heat
transfer (e.g. steam generator vs. IHX), which can compromise the
advantage rooting from the cycle physical size. With this aspect, a
PCHE is introduced instead of conventional IHX. Therefore, the size
of each heat exchanger is estimated as well as the efciency of the
total cycle.
In the adopted cycle layout, there are several heat exchangers:
IHX, HTR, LTR and PC. All these heat exchangers are assumed to
be PCHE type, since PCHE was considered to be one of the best
solutions for reducing the size of gas to gas heat exchanger in the
previous work (Dostal et al., 2004). The size of each heat exchanger
was reduced from the heat exchanger design from the previous
work (Jeong et al., 2010) by reecting the amount of power handled
by the cycle.
In the cycle code, a heat exchanger performance is estimated by
dividing the channel into a number of given meshes. This is because
the S-CO2 Brayton cycle experiences a dramatic change of uid
property, it cannot be fully analyzed through a simple log-mean
temperature difference method.
Temperature and pressure in each mesh are determined by
considering heat transfer and friction pressure drop. Heat trans-
fer coefcient is determined from Dittus-Boelter type correlation
developed by Ngo et al., which is suited for PCHE type channels. The
friction factor is also adopted from the same Ref. Ngo et al. (2007).
Regarding the geometry of PCHE, channel diameter is 2 mm,
gap of channel is 0.4 mm, and the thickness between hot and cold
 H.J. Yoon et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 245 (2012) 223232 227

Table 2
Design specication of the S-CO2 cycle in SMART condition.

Reactor outlet 583.15 Turbine pressure ratio 1.88089

temperature (K)
Max pressure (MPa) 15 Turbine efciency 0.9
Precooler water side 300.15 Compressor efciency 0.89
inlet temperature (K)
Precooler water side 305.15 Recompressing compressor 0.89
outlet temperature (K) Efciency
Flow split ratio 0.3 Precooler water side Pump 0.75
efciency
IHX pressure drop (MPa) 0.13 Electric generator 0.98
efciency

channel is 1.5 mm. A PCHE was also designed on the basis of 0.1 MPa
pressure drop within the channel. From these assumed design
conditions, the effectiveness of PCHE is still over 98% (Heatric)
and maximum temperature difference between reactor outlet
temperature and turbine inlet temperature was held below 2 C.

3.2. Reference layout and operating points

Initial preliminary design parameters were obtained through a

sample calculation based on previous works (Dostal et al., 2004;
Jeong et al., 2010) and these obtained results are set as the refer-
ence design values for this study. The reference design conditions
are shown in Table 2 and reference design results are shown in
Table 3. The parameters that authors think which represent realis-
tic values and are taken from the previous works are: IHX pressure
drop and efciencies of turbomachineries in Table 2. These param-
eters will be investigated separately in the future to incorporate
more realistic component design and to predict the performance
of the proposed system better. The reference design result shows
that the proposed cycle thermal efciency is around 28.5%. This
value is not far from the value we can expect from Fig. 2. The oper-
ating conditions at each point are indicated in Fig. 3 as well as in
Fig. 4 in terms of temperature, pressure and entropy.

3.3. Ideal cycle analysis for the coupled system

Before optimizing the cycle operating conditions, the upper

bound of the combined system was evaluated by simply assum-
ing all the components in the cycle are ideal to identify impact of
realistic components on the cycle efciency. For ideal cycle analy-
sis, following assumptions were made. The rst assumption is that
there is no pressure drop through heat exchangers and 100% of
the effectiveness between hot and cold channels, which is the def-
inition of an ideal heat exchanger. The second assumption is that
the process in turbomachineries is reversible adiabatic process, i.e.
Fig. 4. (a) Pressuretemperature diagram of the coupled system. (b)
ideal turbomachinery. The third assumption is that since the ef-
Temperatureentropy diagram of the coupled system.
ciency of Brayton cycle can be sensitive to the pressure ratio as
well as operating temperature range, the cycle efciency will be
evaluated with varying cycle pressure ratio with xed minimum minimum pressure is due to the dramatic change of CO2 properties
pressure at 7.7 MPa (main compressor inlet). The reason for a xed near the critical point (Dostal et al., 2004). Thus, the inlet condi-
tion of main compressor is xed at 305.15 K and 7.7 MPa for all
Table 3 the calculations. The cycle pressure ratio is dened as the ratio
Reference results of the S-CO2 cycle in SMART condition. of the main compressor outlet pressure to the inlet pressure and
the investigated pressure ratio range is from 1.7 to 3.2. This cor-
Thermal efciency 28.5% Volume of H-T recuperator 24
(m3 ) responds to the range of maximum cycle pressure from 13 MPa to
Volume of precooler (m3 ) 21.6 Volume of L-T recuperator 36 25 MPa. The recompressing fraction is dened as the ratio of the
(m3 ) main compressor mass ow rate to the total mass ow rate in the
Turbine work (MW) 164.6 Main compressor work 24.8 cycle.
(MW)
Recompressing 44.3 Pump work (MW) 0.23
Fig. 5 shows the trend of the cycle efciency vs. the pressure ratio
compressor work (MW) for ideal cycle assumption, while heat exchanger volumes, recom-
Main compressor 1336.6 Recompressing compressor 856.6 pressing fraction, compressor inlet pressure and temperature are
massow (kg/s) massow (kg/s) xed at constant with reference values mentioned above. The
Total massow (kg/s) 2193.2 Recompressing fraction 39.1%
total cycle efciency increases steadily with increasing pressure
228 H.J. Yoon et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 245 (2012) 223232
Fig. 5. Total cycle efciency and mass ow rate for ideal cycle analysis.
ratio since the net work produced by turbomachineries gradually
increases, while the CO2 mass ow rate decreases due to the heat
balance. The upper bound of total cycle efciency is varying from
32% to 37% when the outlet pressure of compressor is changing
from 13 MPa to 25 MPa. The case of ideal turbomachinery shows
better efciency than that of ideal heat exchangers. In other words,
the benet from improving the performance of turbomachinery
from the reference design is more important to enhance the system
efciency than to improve the effectiveness of heat exchanger from
the reference point.
4. Optimization of S-CO2 recompressing cycle
This chapter explains the optimization process of the proposed
design. The optimized values are: (1) cycle pressure ratio, (2) length
of heat exchangers (recuperators and precooler) and (3) ow split
ratio (FSR).
4.1. Pressure ratio
The optimization of cycle pressure ratio is the rst step to design
a Brayton cycle (Dostal et al., 2004). Unlike the ideal cycle realis-
tic turbomachineries efciency, heat exchanger effectiveness and
pressure drop must be taken into the consideration. The turboma-
chineries efciency varies with the type, design and the pressure
ratio (Wang et al., 2005), but it is assumed to be constant in this
study and the values are specied in Table 2. There are two reasons
why the pressure ratio of the proposed system has to be investi-
gated: (1) change of the turbine inlet temperature and (2) safety
of the SMR primary system. For the rst reason, since most of
the previous studies focused on coupling the S-CO2 cycle to the
next generation reactor system with high turbine inlet tempera-
ture (above 500 C), the optimum pressure ratio is found for that
particular operating condition. Thus, for the newly proposed sys-
tem the effect of pressure ratio on the cycle efciency has to be
re-calculated to conrm the optimal pressure ratio with lower tur-
bine inlet temperature (around 310 C). The second reason is due
to the fact that most of previous conventional safety systems of
Fig. 6. Cycle efciency and mass ow rate by pressure ratio and volume effect.
PWRs and SMRs are based on the primary side coolant insurgent
to the secondary side when there is a steam generator tube rup-
ture while the proposed system can have reversed situation if the
S-CO2 cycle maximum pressure is over the primary side pressure
(15 MPa). Therefore, if there is no signicant impact on the cycle
efciency even though the maximum pressure of the S-CO2 cycle
is lowered below the 15 MPa, similar safety systems design and
operation philosophy can be maintained.
The calculation result shows that the optimal cycle efciency is
29.85% at 22 MPa of the compressor outlet pressure and 30% of ow
split ratio as shown in Fig. 6. When the compressor outlet pressure
is 15 MPa, the efciency reduction is only 2.4% compared to the
maximum efciency at 22 MPa. It is observed from Fig. 6 that the
cycle efciency is not signicantly inuenced by the pressure ratio
when the performance of turbomachinery is xed and the pressure
ratio of the cycle is over 2, which is consistent with the observa-
tion from Dostal et al.s work (Dostal et al., 2004). For the safety
purpose mentioned above, if the maximum pressure of the S-CO2
cycle limited under the primary side pressure of SMART (15 MPa),
the cycle efciency is only decreased by 2.4%, even though the max-
imum pressure decreased over 7 MPa from the optimum pressure
at 22 MPa.
To understand why optimum pressure ratio exists for the S-
CO2 Brayton cycle, the power production and consumption from
each turbomachinery are analyzed for different pressure ratio. Fig. 7
shows the effect of pressure ratio on the total net power production
of the cycle along with power production of turbine, and power con-
sumptions of main compressor and recompressing compressor. It is
noted that for the given condition, the water pumping power does
not have a signicant impact on the total net power produced, since
the compressor inlet conditions are xed above critical conditions.
Therefore, the water pumping power is neglected from Fig. 7.
The optimal pressure ratio exists due to two competing effects.
The rst effect is the increase in the power production from the
turbine when the pressure ratio is increased and the second effect
is the increase in the power consumption from two compressors
when the pressure ratio is increased. After 22 MPa compressor
outlet pressure the increase in compressor power consumption
 H.J. Yoon et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 245 (2012) 223232
Fig. 7. The effect of pressure ratio on power of turbomachineries.
exceeds the increase in power production from the turbine due
to increase in the cycle pressure ratio, and before 22 MPa the situ-
ation is reversed. This observation was similarly made by previous
work as well (Dostal et al., 2004). Thus, this result demonstrates that
the optimization result for higher turbine inlet temperature reactor
system application can be repeatedly used for the proposed sys-
tem in this paper, since the impact from non-linear CO2 property
variation on the power cycle performance is very similar regard-
less of the turbine inlet temperature. However, even though the
trend is similar, the total effect of pressure ratio on the cycle for the
proposed system is milder than the system of high turbine inlet
temperature.
4.2. Heat exchanger geometry
The effect of heat exchangers total volume on the total cycle
efciency is shown in Fig. 6 as well. Each individual heat exchanger
volume was reduced or increased from the reference design by 10%
respectively by decreasing/increasing the total number of chan-
nels in the PCHE type heat exchanger. The cycle efciency becomes
higher as the heat exchanger heat transfer area increases. This
result implies that even at 15 MPa cycle pressure, further optimiza-
tion of the cycle through component sizing can increase the total
cycle efciency which can be comparable to the current SMART
thermal efciency 30.3% with steam-Rankine cycle (Chang, 2002).
In other words, if the reference conguration is re-optimized for
the lower pressure ratio, the decrement of the cycle efciency can
be further reduced. Therefore, the impact of coupling S-CO2 cycle
to SMRs can be minimized while the cycle efciency is maintained
at reasonable value.
As shown in Fig. 6, the total cycle efciency is slightly affected
by volume of heat exchanger. A larger volume of heat exchanger
brings better efciency but not much. Thus, geometry with limited
volume of HX needs to be well designed to enhance the total cycle
efciency for better cost effectiveness. There are three major com-
ponents in heat exchangers which are required to be optimized
in the proposed system: the recuperator, the pre-cooler and the
intermediate heat exchanger. All heat exchangers are zigzag type
PCHE which shows high performance of gas to gas heat transfer
229
Fig. 8. Total cycle efciency by the different heat exchanger length.
(*OL denotes an optimal length).
with a compact size. For the preliminary design of IHX, the calcu-
lated parameters showed a performance of 98.59% effectiveness,
0.15 MPa pressure drop, and 13.1 m3 volume for 330 MWth of heat
transfer between primary and secondary side. HTR, LTR and PC
geometry is also analyzed based on the reference condition.
Fig. 8 shows the total cycle efciency affected by the length
of heat exchangers (HTR, LTR and PC). To maintain the same vol-
ume as the reference design, the number of channels in the PCHE
was reduced while the length is increased proportionally. Thus, the
effectiveness and pressure drop increase by increasing the length
of PCHE. From the calculation, the optimized length of each heat
exchanger is suggested as 0.75 m for HTR, 1.5 m for LTR, and 1.25 m
for PC as marked in Fig. 8.
4.3. Flow split ratio
The effects of split ratio on the cycle efciency are analyzed
based on the reference condition at 15 and 22 MPa of cycle pres-
sure. The analyzed results with two different pressures are shown
in Fig. 9. The split ratio is dened as the recuperated amount of
mass ow divided by the total mass ow rate. The optimal ow
split ratio is varying with the different pressure ranges. The opti-
mal FSR at 22 MPa is 36% with 30.05% of maximum cycle efciency
while the optimal FSR at 15 MPa is 46% with 29.03% of maximum
cycle efciency. For better understanding, the case of 15 MPa of
cycle pressure was mainly focused on following explanation. If the
ow split ratio is zero, it means simple cycle layout without recom-
pressing compressor.
In the case of no recompressing, the maximum achievable ef-
ciency is only 24%. In the case of ideal turbomachinery and heat
exchanger, the total cycle efciency is increased up to 40% when
the ow split ratio is 50%. But in a real system with real compo-
nents, the maximum efciency is 29% at 46% of ow split ratio.
And, a temperature difference at merging point is 10 C.
The reason why the total efciency decreases after reaching the
maximum efciency can be explained by works of turbomachiner-
ies as shown in Fig. 10. When the recuperated ow rate increases,
230 H.J. Yoon et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 245 (2012) 223232
Fig. 9. Cycle efciency and temperature difference at merging point with varying
ow split ratio (15 MPa, 22 MPa).
the total mass ow rate of system also increases. More mass ow
rate results in more turbine work. But, as the work consumed by
recompressing compressor exceeds the work generated by turbine
after 46% of ow split ratio, the net work done by turbomachineries
decreases.
To optimize the split ratio, the temperature difference at the
merging point should be considered as well. The temperature dif-
ference can cause thermal striping which can deteriorate long
term material integrity (Lee et al., 2009). When more heat is recu-
perated, the inlet temperature of the IHX becomes higher. From
previous research, the temperature difference was less than 5 C.
Fig. 10. The work of turbomachinery with varying ow split ratio (15 MPa).
Dostal et al.s results were based on zero temperature difference at
merging points and they used PCHE with straight channel. Mean-
while, Jeong et al. evaluated 5 C of temperature gap and they
applied PCHE with zigzag channel. The zigzag channel typed PCHE
was selected for this study and Jeong et al.s reference values are
adopted. The temperature difference is 10 K at 46%. And, the dif-
ference is less than 5 K over 48%. Although the cycle efciency is
highest at 46% of the split ratio, 48% of the split ratio is recom-
mended until the thermal striping issue is fully resolved.
5. Turbomachinery design
5.1. Design process
The uniqueness for designing S-CO2 turbomachineries is that
the property variation within the turbomachineries is far from the
ideal gas assumption. Therefore, estimating the enthalpy change
or pressure variation within the turbomachineries has to be per-
formed on the basis of real gas properties. The modications to the
ideal gas base turbomachinery design tools to incorporate the S-
CO2 property variation were already suggested in works of Wang
et al. (2005) and demonstrated some success. The KAISTKhalifa
University joint research team has developed an in-house turbo-
machinery design code based on works of Wang et al. for axial
type turbomachineries along with some added new features. All
the thermodynamic properties of S-CO2 are calculated from the
NIST property subroutines.
At the early stage of turbomachinery design, the efciency of
a turbomachinery is dependent on the estimated pressure losses.
There are four kinds of primary loss sources. Before further discus-
sion, it should be noted that the experimental data and respective
empirical correlation for the pressure losses are not well estab-
lished for the S-CO2 turbomachineries so far. Recently, the Sandia
National Laboratory (SNL) reported preliminary results from a com-
pression loop experiment. According to their results, the observed
performance map data agree extremely well with the predictions
based on a real gas compressor model up to now (Wright et al.,
2010). Therefore, until there are experimental data that indicate
current real gas based loss models are incorrect, the most general
and widely applicable loss models in the literatures, were selected
and used in the design code.First, the prole loss is generated by
boundary layer growth and blade wake on the blade surface and
is represented by wake momentum thickness, solidity, and ow
angle. Lieblein correlations (Lieblein, 1959) are used for estimat-
ing the loss of compressor, BaljeBinsley correlations (Balje and
Binsley, 1968) are selected for that of turbine. The annulus loss is
associated with the end-wall boundary layers, and the secondary
ow loss is due to the cascade and trailing vortices. Vavra and How-
ells correlation (Vavra, 1974; Horlock, 1973) are used for predicting
the secondary loss and the end-wall loss of compressor. The annu-
lus loss and the secondary ow loss for turbine can be calculated
together by KackerOkapuu (Kacker and Okapuu, 1982).
- Lieblein correlation for prole loss in compressors:
te
prole = 2
c
 2  3
 cos 1 2Hte te 
1 Hte
cos 2 cos 2 3Hte 1 c cos 2
(1)
where,  te /c = 0.00138e1.1127Deq
+ 0.0025 and Hte = 1.26 +
0.795(Deq 1)1.681
- Vavras correlation for the secondary loss in compressors:
 
cos2 1
second ow = 0.04CL2  (2)
cos3
 H.J. Yoon et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 245 (2012) 223232 231

- Howells correlation for end-wall loss in compressors:

 S   cos2 
1
end-wall = 0.02 (3)
h
cos3
- BaljeBinsley correlation for prole loss in turbine:
 
t
cos2 2 1(1Hte ) te
t
 tte
2
 t
2 + sin2 2 1 Hte  t
1Hte  te
t
Yp = 1  2  
tte tte
1 2 sin2 2 1 Hte  t 1 (1 + Hte )  t

(4)

where * and Hte are the boundary layer momentum thickness and
the trailing-edge boundary layer form factor.
- KackerOkapuu correlation for annulus loss and secondary
ow loss in turbine:
 cos 
2
Ys = 0.0334f(AR) Z (5)
cos 1
The design variables are operating conditions, number of stages
and ow coefcient, which is the ratio of axial velocity to mean
blade rotating velocity. The design variables are modied to avoid
excessive aerodynamic loading that can cause stall during nomi-
nal operation while the size of each designed turbomachinery was
minimized. Fig. 11. The effect of pressure ratio on tip diameter (TD) and axial length (AL) of
turbomachinery.
5.2. Size variation of turbomachinery with pressure ratio

Size and actual performance of axial type turbomachineries in

the S-CO2 cycle were previously investigated by Wang et al. (2005).
Major conclusions drawn from the work are the following: small
Mach number; signicant gas bending stress; small tip diameter
and high hub/tip ratio; wide and thick blades; short blade height
and low aspect ratio; high chord Reynolds number; and a at annu-
lus are. They are also very compact in terms of dimensions and
number of stages, compared to other machines in different type
of power conversion systems. As mentioned earlier, the previous
research works focused on combining the S-CO2 cycle with the
next generation reactor system which operates above 500 C. In this
study, the proposed S-CO2 cycle is combined with SMART which
is operating at maximum temperature of 310 C. Therefore, not
only the cycle efciency and heat exchangers vary from the previ-
ous study but also the size of turbomachinery has to be estimated
for different condition.The effect of pressure ratio on geometry of
turbomachineries between 15 and 20 MPa are shown in Fig. 11.
Since all the turbomachineries are designed with xed tip diame-
ter geometry, the diameter shown in Fig. 11 represents tip diameter
for all stages in each turbomachinery. When the pressure ratio was
decreased from 2.5 (20 MPa) to 1.9 (15 MPa), both of the diameters
and the axial length of turbomachinery are increased. Even though
the geometry was enlarged according to the decreasing of pres-
sure ratio, the total volume change of turbomachinery was from
1.1 m3 to 1.4 m3 without casing. As a result, all the turbomachiner- Fig. 12. The effect of pressure ratio on isentropic efciency of turbomachinery.
ies can be tted within 1 m of diameter and 1.6 m of axial length
of cylindrical geometry regardless of the pressure ratio. In other
words, an entire turbomachinery system ts into volume of 1.4 m3 operating conditions and modes of these components. Further-
and it will have considerably less weight compared to the steam- more, radial type turbomachineries will be investigated to identify
Rankine system. This means that the whole (balance of plant) BOP the best suitable type for the proposed system during normal oper-
can be easily modularized. The effect of pressure ratio on the isen- ating condition as well as off-design operation.
tropic efciency of turbomachinery is shown in Fig. 12 as well. With
the decrease of pressure ratio, isentropic efciency of each com- 6. Summary and conclusion
ponent is decreased; that of main turbine reduced from 96.9 to
92.3: that of main compressor from 91.7 to 84.8: that of recom- The S-CO2 Brayton cycle has higher efciency (40%) and much
pressing compressor from 93.8 to 88.6. However, more detailed smaller cycle footprint in high temperature and high pressure
analysis regarding the designed turbomachinery has to be followed operating conditions (500 C, 20 MPa) compared to other power
to validate and identify if the design is sound under all the possible cycles. Therefore, previously the S-CO2 Brayton cycle was studied
232 H.J. Yoon et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 245 (2012) 223232
for the application of the next generation nuclear reactor system
with high operating temperature. However, as it was suggested by
KAISTKhalifa University joint research team, coupling the S-CO2
Brayton cycle to a SMR such as SMART can be another potential
option where the S-CO2 Brayton cycle can improve the system
performance signicantly. In order to assess the potential bene-
ts appropriately, the effects of various operating conditions and
design options for cycle components were considered in this paper.
Although the cycle was identied to possess better efciency in
high operating temperature region (550 C) previously, still the
efciency of the S-CO2 cycle within SMR operating condition
showed a comparable efciency to the existing steam-Rankine
cycle for SMRs (30%) at optimum pressure ratio. The evaluated
results are summarized as follows:
1. The upper bound of total cycle efciency with ideal system com-
ponents is varying from 32% to 37% when the outlet pressure
of compressor is changing from 13 MPa to 25 MPa. Improving
the performance of turbomachinery from the reference design
is more effective to enhance the system efciency than that of
heat exchanger.
2. The efciency of a cycle with realistic components is not signi-
cantly inuenced by the pressure ratio when the performance of
turbomachinery is xed, which is consistent with the observa-
tion from previous work. The maximum cycle efciency is 29.85%
at 22 MPa of the compressor outlet pressure and 30% of FSR.
However, even though the maximum cycle pressure is reduced
to the level of SMART primary side pressure 15 MPa, the net ef-
ciency is only reduced by 2.4%, which implies that the S-CO2
cycle can have less impact on the total nuclear system design.
3. The total cycle efciency is slightly affected by volume of heat
exchangers. A larger volume of heat exchanger brings better
efciency but not that signicant. When the volumes of heat
exchangers are xed as the reference values which are 24 m3 of
HTR, 36 m3 of LTR, and 21.6 m3 of PC, the optimized length of
each heat exchangers are estimated at 0.75 m for HTR, 1.5 m for
LTR, and 1.25 m for PC.
4. The cycle efciency can be further decreased by considering the
pressure drop due to piping and plenum in a component. How-
ever, from a sensitivity study to address the uncertainty in the
system pressure drop estimation, it was identied that even the
whole system pressure drop was assumed to be two times higher
than the calculated value; still the cycle efciency was reduced
by less than 0.3%. Therefore, at current stage the underestima-
tion of the total pressure drop in the proposed system seems to
have a limited effect on the system performance.
5. The simple cycle layout without a recompressing compressor
at 15 MPa of the compressor outlet pressure can achieve only
24% of the cycle efciency. Increased recompressing ow leads
to better efciency and less temperature difference at merging
point. The maximum cycle efciency is 29% at 46% of ow split
ratio.
6. When the pressure ratio was decreased from 2.5 (20 MPa) to 1.9
(15 MPa), both of the diameters and the axial length of turboma-
chinery are increased. Even though the geometry was enlarged
in accordance with the decrease of pressure ratio, the total vol-
ume change of turbomachinery was only from 1.1 m3 to 1.4 m3
without casing.
7. Since the primary side pressure of SMART is at 15 MPa, and the
existing system usually postulates primary to secondary coolant
insurgence, the effect of maximum S-CO2 cycle pressure reduc-
tion to 15 MPa to avoid any impact on the current SMR primary
system design due to the coupling was investigated. As a result,
the total cycle efciency is reduced only by 1.8% when the max-
imum pressure is at 15 MPa and this can be further improved by
optimizing the heat exchanger designs.
In conclusion, according to preliminary results we discussed
above, potentially the entire BOP system with the S-CO2 cycle can
be modularized into a single component, and it can be even tted
inside the SMR pressure vessel while the efciency is comparable to
the current steam-Rankine cycle. This advantage can increase the
competitiveness of SMRs by reducing the capital cost further which
in turn reduces the nancial risk involved, easier operation and
management, and provides the possibility to transport the system
by various means for various purposes.
In the future, more thorough optimization of the proposed sys-
tem will be performed to enhance the efciency while reducing
the total size of all the cycle components. The transient behavior
will be considered as well to identify the characteristic of the pro-
posed system under different operating conditions. Furthermore,
the radial turbomachineries will be designed as well to compare
pros and cons of both radial and axial turbomachineries for the
proposed system.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge that this research was
nancially supported by the Korean Ministry of Education, Science
and Technology and by the Khalifa University for Science, Technol-
ogy and Research.
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