Supercritical Carbon Dioxide(s-CO2) Power Cycle for Waste Heat Recovery: A Review from Thermodynamic Perspective

Supercritical CO2 power cycles have been deeply investigated in recent years. However, their potential in waste heat recovery is still largely unexplored. This paper presents a critical review of engineering background, technical challenges, and current advances of the s-CO2 cycle for waste heat recovery. Firstly, common barriers for the further promotion of waste heat recovery technology are discussed. Afterwards, the technical advantages of the s-CO2 cycle in solving the abovementioned problems are outlined by comparing several state-of-the-art thermodynamic cycles. On this basis, current research results in this field are reviewed for three main applications, namely the fuel cell, internal combustion engine, and gas turbine. For low temperature applications, the transcritical CO2 cycles can compete with other existing technologies, while supercritical CO2 cycles are more attractive for medium- and high temperature sources to replace steam Rankine cycles. Moreover, simple and regenerative configurations are more suitable for transcritical cycles, whereas various complex configurations have advantages for medium- and high temperature heat sources to form cogeneration system. Finally, from the viewpoints of in-depth research and engineering applications, several future development directions are put forward. This review hopes to promote the development of s-CO2 cycles for waste heat recovery.