Supercritical CO2 pilot aims to make steam turbines obsolete

11-07-2023 • arclein

The properties of this supercritical CO2 fluid make it ideal for energy extraction in a closed-loop system, and back in 2016, General Electric announced it would start building a pilot plant to prove the idea in a commercially relevant installation, expecting to achieve 10 MW at an extraction efficiency of 50% ?" around 10% better than current steam turbines, which operate in the mid-40s ?" using a turbine about one-tenth the size. Such a turbine could significantly reduce the capital cost of setting up any power generator reliant on heat and turbines; not only will the smaller turbines be cheaper, but they're so much more compact that you'll need less land for a given power plant. It'd also produce more power from a given heat source, and by default reduce the per-unit carbon emissions even of coal and gas-based generators.