Analysis of superimposed elementary thermodynamic cycles: from the Brayton-Joule to advanced mixed (auto-combined) cycles

The need for efficiency improvement in energy conversion systems leads to a stricter functional integration among system components. This results in structures of increasing complexity, the high performance of which are often difficult to be understood easily. To make the comprehension of these structures easier, a new approach is followed in this paper, consisting in their representation as partial or total superimposition of elementary thermodynamic cycles. Although system performance cannot, in general, be evaluated as the sum of the performance of the separate thermodynamic cycles, this kind of representation and analysis can be of great help in understanding directions of development followed in the literature for the construction of advanced energy systems, and could suggest new potential directions of work. The evolution from the simple Brayton-Joule cycle to the so called “mixed” cycles, in which heat at the turbine discharge is exploited using internal heat sinks only without using a separate bottoming section, is used to demonstrate the potentiality of the approach. Mixed cycles are named here "auto-combined cycles” to highlight the combination of different (gas and steam) cycles within the same system components.