Density-Based Control of Air Coolers in Supercritical CO2 Power Cycles⁎This research work is supported by the European Commission under Horizon 2020 Grant 764690 - Project sCO2-Flex. Issue 2 (2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Casella, Francesco; Mangola, Giovanni; Alfani, Dario
• Is Part Of: IFAC-PapersOnLine. Volume 53:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 12554
• Page End: 12559
• Publication Date: 2020
• Subjects: Modeling -- simulation of power systems -- Control system design -- Control of renewable energy sources -- Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycles; Automatic control -- Periodicals; 629.805
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ifacol.2020.12.1810
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2405-8963

Abstract

Abstract: In this paper, the problem of controlling the thermodynamic state at the outlet of the air cooling unit in a supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle is addressed. First-principle modelling analysis of the cooler model with boundary conditions representing the interaction with the full plant reveals that the dynamic response of the CO2 outlet density to small changes of the cooling air flow has a much higher gain and a much more regular behaviour across the whole operating range of the system than the outlet temperature, suggesting to use the former variable for feedback control instead of the latter. Furthermore, it is shown how adaptive density feedback controllers can be designed with simple gain scheduling policies based on the plant load level and on the cooling air temperature.