Application of Pointwise T-Rex Meshing and CFD Modeling to the Analysis of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide (S-CO2) Power Cycles

Interest has increased in the S-CO₂ Brayton cycle for new efficient power systems, but the ability to analyze these systems at off-design conditions is lacking. The complex analysis requires modeling of flow transitioning between liquid and gas phases with high-resolution meshing.

Pointwise provided the high-quality meshes needed for high-resolution analyses of supercritical CO₂ cycle machines using multi-species/multi-phase flow solvers to resolve the complex physics.

Pointwise’s T-Rex meshing resolved the flow gradients with a minimum number of grid points – in this case, 1.5 million or fewer cells – to speed up the solution.