Recompression Closed Brayton Cycle Control Options Nuclear Science

The attractive performance of the S-CO₂ recompression cycle arises from the thermo-physical properties of carbon dioxide near the critical point. However, to ensure efficient operation of the cycle near the critical point, precise control of the heat removal rate by the pre-cooler upstream of the main compressor is required. With respect to the S-CO₂ recompression cycle at SNL, presently an operator is tasked with manually adjusting the opening of the valve that governs the water flow rate through the pre-cooler. This report describes a procedure to design an automatic controller that uses the water flow rate as a controlling variable to regulate the S-CO₂ temperature at the pre-cooler outlet. The work relies on the GPASS control-oriented model of the pre-cooler developed last year. A model-based approach is used to design a PI (Proportional-Integral) controller. Then a transfer function describing the influence of the water flow rate on the S-CO₂ outlet temperature is derived from the pre-cooler model. Suitable values for the controller gains are then derived and finally the gains are tested on the initial time-discrete non-linear model.