Thermo-economic Analysis of Lead-based Reactor System Integrated With the Recompression Supercritical CO₂ Brayton Cycle

In this paper, a complete thermo-economic model is developed for the lead-based reactor system (LFRs) integrated with the recompression supercritical CO₂ (S-CO₂) Brayton cycle. Based on the model, the thermo-economic performance of the whole LFRs is investigated under different operating conditions, and the effect of turbine inlet temperature, main compressor inlet temperature, total recuperator conductance (the product of the heat transfer coefficient and the area), maximum cycle pressure on the thermo-economic performance of the integrated LFRs is discussed, respectively. The results are presented as follow. First, the turbine inlet temperature has a parabolic effect on the electricity production cost (EPC ) of the integrated LFRs, which exhibits that the excessive operating temperature is not beneficial to the economic performance of the integrated LFRs. Second, both of the increasing of maximum cycle pressure and total recuperator conductance can improve the efficiency of the integrated LFRs and EPC of system as well. Thus, the thermodynamic performance and economic performance of the integrated LFRs should be considered at the same time for the selection of maximum cycle pressure and total recuperator conductance. Finally, the optimum inlet temperature of the main compressor should be set in the range of 32~41℃, because the thermo-economic performance of LFRs gets worse when the main compressor inlet temperature exceeds 41℃.