THERMAL SCIENCE

International Scientific Journal

Xin Shen

,

Xiaohe Wang

,

Xinjie Zhu

,

Hua Zhang

,

Shuang Yang

THERMODYNAMIC-ECONOMIC-ENVIRONMENTAL-MATCHING ANALYSES OF COMBINED COOLING HEATING AND POWER SYSTEM BASED ON SUPERCRITICAL CARBON DIOXIDE CYCLE

ABSTRACT
It is an efficient way to converse solar thermal energy by supercritical CO₂ Brayton cycle. Considering the characteristics of low-pressure ratio and large recuperation of the supercritical CO₂ power cycle, a combined cooling, heating, and power system is proposed to utilize the waste heat of turbine outlet to drive operations of cooling and heating. Firstly, economic-environmental-matching analyses with variable solar multiple are conducted in five climatic areas. Secondly, the comprehensive performances of the system are investigated. Finally, the uncertainty analysis of the economic performance is carried out. The findings indicate that the levelized cost of electricity of the system is the lowest, and both pollutant emission reduction rate and primary energy saving rate of the system are close to 100% in Lhasa area with abundant solar resource, when the solar multiple is 2.5. As for the uncertainty analysis, the levelized cost of electricity of 0.081 ∙ mathrm{kWh}\^{-1} $ is achieved. Therefore, a method to improve efficiency of the solar thermal energy is provided.
KEYWORDS
supercritical CO2, solar energy, cogeneration system
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2025-11-22
PAPER REVISED: 2026-01-12
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2026-01-16
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 2026-03-07
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI251128024S
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Thermodynamic-economic-environmental-matching analyses of combined cooling heating and power system based on supercritical carbon dioxide cycle

© 2026 Society of Thermal Engineers of Serbia. Published by the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International licence