Supercritical carbon dioxide applications: features and advantages

The Supercritical carbon dioxide (SCO2) is widely used in many industrial applications as process or heat transfer fluid. The SCO2 is characterized by good chemical stability at high temperature, supercritical conditions at limited temperature and pressure and high thermodynamic efficiency. Because of these features, SCO2 allows to operate with small sized operating machines and higher efficiency compared to conventional applications. Moreover, the SCO2 can be used in conventional thermodynamic gas cycles reaching higher efficiency at the same temperature level. The main advantage is the possibility of reaching thermodynamic efficiency values close to 50%, much higher than conventional cycles. Moreover, the critical point of CO2, low pressure and low temperature (7 MPa and 300 K), makes systems more economic and technically feasible than systems powered by other supercritical fluids. SCO2 industrial applications are analyzed in the present paper and specific advantages will be investigated.