Thermodynamic performance evaluation and power/cooling energy trade-off estimation of an isolated system driven by nuclear energy

The wide temperature range requirement of components in an isolated system offers the possibility for power regulation for combined cooling and power system by adjusting the cooling energy supplement amount. To achieve the flexible operation and combined energy output for the independent nuclear power system, this paper proposes an isolated combined cooling and power system driven by nuclear energy to track power load by making an energy trade-off between net power output and cooling capacity by combing the steam Rankine cycle with the ammonia-water mixture cycle. Parametric analysis and single objective optimization are carried out to explore the effect of the key parameters on system performance. Multi-objective optimization is presented to obtain the optimal parameters group. The regulation capacity of power and cooling is analyzed by trade-off strategy for the proposed system based on the design condition. Results show that the optimal thermal efficiency of the proposed system is 31.60 % based on the single objective optimization. The rated thermal efficiency is 32.8 % with 2229.7 kW power energy and 1045.7 kW cooling energy output based on multi-objective optimization. In addition, the power load can be regulated from 78.1 % to 111.8 %, and the corresponding cooling load is adjusted from 176.1 % to 58.7 %. Furthermore, the improvement of the component performance should focus on the steam turbine and evaporator. The trade-off strategy offers an original conception of the regulation method for an isolated system.