Preliminary Design and Numerical Investigation of a Centrifugal Compressor for Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Operating in the Vicinity of Its Critical Thermodynamic State

Waste heat recovery is one of the main practices used to reduce the carbon footprint of the industrial sector regarding environmental concern. The supercritical carbon dioxide (s-CO2) cycle is one of the most attractive heat-to-power technologies; due to the abrupt variation in CO2 properties in the vicinity of its critical point, small compression work is required and finally a high cycle efficiency is achieved. In the literature, among the various proposed layouts, the recompression s-CO2 Brayton cycle is considered to be the most efficient one. The most critical component of such a cycle is definitely the main compressor, as the related usual design procedures have been developed in the past for ideal gas as a working fluid. This study presents a methodology for the preliminary design of a centrifugal compressor with a vaned diffuser, suitable for fulfilling the desired operating requirements of a particular supercritical CO2 recompression Brayton cycle. Furthermore, it demonstrates the numerical investigation of the three-dimensional (3D) flow phenomena occurring in it, focusing on the investigation of possible condensation. To this end, a one-dimensional flow model was developed to provide information regarding the geometry of the compressor and predict its prospective performance. Commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software was then employed to examine the three-dimensional flow. The effect of accuracy in the evaluation of real gas properties approaching the critical point was examined, showing that a look-up table with more points around the critical point can reduce the numerical relative error by up to 0.3% for the value of specific heat capacity. In addition, the possibility of condensation occurrence was investigated at the impeller’s inlet, where the flow is accelerated. The supersaturation pressure ratio was defined and implemented in order to identify regions where static pressure is lower than saturation pressure, possibly leading to local two-phase flow.