Brayton Cycle
The working gas of a Brayton cycle can be Helium, Nitrogen, or Carbon Dioxide. The high-pressure working gas is expanded in a turbine to produce power. The low-pressure warm gas is cooled in an ambient cooler. The low-pressure cold gas is compressed to the high-pressure of the system. Often the turbine and the compressor are mechanically connected through a single shaft. High pressure Brayton cycles are expected to have a smaller generator footprint compared to lower pressure Rankine cycles. A Brayton cycle heat engine can operate at lower pressure with wider diameter piping. The world's first commercial Brayton cycle solar power module (100 kW) was built and demonstrated in the Israel's Arava desert in 2009.
Read more about this topic: Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, Power Generation
Famous quotes containing the word cycle:
“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.”
—Lewis Mumford (18951990)