| Summary: | Supercritical CO<sub>2</sub> (S-CO<sub>2</sub>) Brayton cycles have become an effective way in utilizing solar energy, considering their advantages. The presented research discusses a parametrized analysis and systematic comparison of three S-CO<sub>2</sub> power cycles coupled with parabolic trough collectors. The effects of turbine inlet temperature and pressure, compressor inlet temperature, and pressure on specific work, overall efficiency, and cost of core equipment of different S-CO<sub>2</sub> Brayton cycles are discussed. Then, the two performance criteria, including specific work and cost of core equipment, are compared, simultaneously, between different S-CO<sub>2</sub> cycle layouts after gaining the Pareto sets from multi-objective optimizations using genetic algorithm. The results suggest that the simple recuperation cycle layout shows more excellent performance than the intercooling cycle layout and the recompression cycle layout in terms of cost, while the advantage in specific work of the intercooling cycle layout and the recompression cycle layout is not obvious. This study can be useful in selecting cycle layout using solar energy by the parabolic trough solar collector when there are requirements for the specific work and the cost of core equipment. Moreover, high turbine inlet temperature is recommended for the S-CO<sub>2</sub> Brayton cycle using solar energy.
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