Technology Readiness and Development of the Reheat Air-Brayton Combined Cycle Power Conversion System using Molten Salt
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Technology Readiness and Development of the Reheat Air-Brayton Combined Cycle Power Conversion System using Molten Salt

Abstract

Electricity markets are being significantly influenced by the rapid adoption of renewable energy sources. Traditional baseload energy sources such as coal and nuclear are not currently designed to be profitable in this new energy market environment. Moreover, integration of these energy sources, while popular for reducing dependence on carbon-based energy sources, have led to technical challenges in maintaining grid stability. As the penetration of renewables increases, these challenges will also be exacerbated. This dissertation presents a novel power conversion system, the Reheat Air-Brayton Combined Cycle (RACC), capable of mitigating these issues. The RACC can be coupled to any heat source capable of producing high temperature molten salt, such as a molten salt nuclear reactor or concentrated solar power. It provides superior operational flexibility, which improves grid stability and allows traditionally inflexible energy sources to take advantage of electricity market price fluctuations. This dissertation is split into five sections. The first section details the economic motivation for the RACC and gives a brief introduction into the various components of the RACC including a novel salt to air heat exchanger, a modified gas turbine, a thermal energy storage system, and advanced heat recovery steam generator control. The second section introduces the technology readiness of each of these major components of the RACC. This section also introduces novel work performed in this dissertation to increase the technology readiness level of the salt to air heat exchanger and the system control for the RACC. The third section describes the Vessel and Accelerated Creep Experiment (VACE), an experiment designed to validate the design of the Coiled Tube Air Heater (CTAH), the novel salt to air heat exchanger design for the RACC. This section discusses the motivation, design, methodology, and results of VACE. Sections four and five discuss the efforts to develop and demonstrate the controls and operation of the RACC. The fourth section presents a dynamic model of the RACC that was developed for the demonstration of RACC transient operation. The choice of modeling software is discussed. The model is described in detail, and results for various operating scenarios are presented and compared to previous modeling efforts. The fifth section discusses the implementation of the dynamic model described in the fourth section into a power plant operator room simulator known as the Advanced Reactor Controls and Operation (ARCO) facility. Future work made possible through this facility is presented.

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