Supercritical Carbon Dioxide (sCO2) power cycles have the potential to deliver high efficiency at low cost. However, in order for an sCO2 cycle to reach high efficiency, highly effective recuperators are needed. These recuperative heat exchangers must transfer heat at a rate that is substantially larger than the heat transfer to the cycle itself and can therefore represent a significant portion of the power block costs. Regenerators are proposed as a cost saving alternative to high cost printed circuit recuperators for this application. A regenerator is an indirect heat exchanger which periodically stores and releases heat to the working fluid. The simple design of a regenerator can be made more inexpensively compared to current options.

The objective of this paper is a detailed evaluation of regenerators as a competing technology for recuperators within an sCO₂ Brayton cycle. The level of the analysis presented here is sufficient to identify issues with the regenerator system in order to direct future work and also to clarify the potential advantage of pursuing this technology. A reduced order model of a regenerator is implemented into a cycle model of an sCO₂ Brayton cycle. An economic analysis investigates the cost savings that is possible by switching from recuperative heat exchangers to switched-bed regenerators. The cost of the regenerators was estimated using the amount of material required if the pressure vessel is sized using ASME Boiler Pressure Vessel Code (BPVC) requirements. The cost of the associated valves is found to be substantial for the regenerator system and is estimated in collaboration with an industrial valve supplier. The result of this analysis suggests that a 21.2% reduction in the contribution to the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCoE) from the power block can be realized by switching to a regenerator-based system.

超临界二氧化碳（sCO2）功率循环具有以低成本提供高效率的潜力。但是，为了使sCO2循环达到高效率，需要高效的换热器。这些同流换热器必须以比传递到循环本身的热量大得多的速率传递热量，因此可能代表功率块成本的很大一部分。对于该应用，提出了蓄热器作为高成本印刷电路换热器的节省成本的替代方案。蓄热器是一种间接热交换器，它定期存储热量并将热量释放到工作流体中。与当前的选件相比，再生器的简单设计可以更便宜地制造。

本文的目的是对再生器进行详细评估，该再生器是sCO ₂布雷顿循环内同流换热器的一项竞争技术。此处介绍的分析级别足以确定再生器系统的问题，以便指导未来的工作，并阐明采用该技术的潜在优势。将再生器的降阶模型实现为sCO ₂的循环模型布雷顿循环。一项经济分析调查了通过从换热式换热器切换到床交换式蓄热器可能实现的成本节省。如果压力容器是根据ASME锅炉压力容器规范（BPVC）要求来确定尺寸的，则再生器的成本是使用所需的材料量估算的。已经发现，对于再生器系统，相关阀门的成本是巨大的，并且是与工业阀门供应商合作进行估算的。该分析的结果表明，通过切换到基于再生器的系统，可以实现功率块对平均电力成本（LCoE）的贡献减少21.2％。