Compact fusion advanced Rankine (CFARII) power cycle-operating regimes

The performance (cost/kWe and efficiency) of generic compact fusion advanced Rankine (CFARII) power conversion is investigated for various working fluids, operating temperatures and pressures, and thermal power levels. Good CFARII performance is found for a remarkably broad range of materials, temperatures, pressures and power levels, which gives considerable flexibility to future design studies which may apply CFARII energy conversion to specific fusion energy sources such as ICF (inertial confinement fusion), MICF, and Mini-PACER. Specifically, in future designs that would apply CFARII power conversion to particular reactor designs, there is considerable flexibility to choose combinations of materials and operating conditions to accommodate other reactor design constraints, and therefore, a greater chance of finding a combination that meets all engineering and physics constraints while still achieving attractive efficiency and low cost. The economic robustness of CFARII is directly related to its extremely high mass power density, and the high efficiency (η_MHD≳50%) of CFARII relative to previous MHD (magnetohydrodynamic) generator design and experiments is due to the higher temperatures of 1 to 3 eV made possible by direct coupling of nuclear energy release to the working fluid material