Small scale sCO 2 compressor impeller design considering real fluid conditions

Supercritical carbon dioxide cycles are extremely compact and hence offer a new and a wide range of applications. Besides the benefits of a compact cycle some challenges arise for the turbo machinery development. In this paper a first design for the compressor applied to the Brayton cycle is presented. The Brayton cycle is used for the supercritical heat removal system (sCO2-HeRo) which safely removes residual heat from a nuclear power plant (Venker et al., 2010, 2014). Based on the sCO2-HeRo system the design procedure for the compressor is explained and the implementation of the real fluid properties into the CFD code is reviewed. Finally, the influence of the real fluid properties on the aerodynamic performance is discussed.