Prospects of the use of chemically reactive working media in solar energy

The use of dissociating gases in solar and solar/fossil electric generating stations is shown to increase efficiency and to decrease cost. The advantages of gas and gas-liquid cycles with the heat transfer agent N2O4 as the working medium over both gas turbines using inert gases and steam turbines are presented. In the flow section of a high-pressure turbine of a gas-liquid cycle, high-pressure gas expands from 150 to 21 atm, and the gas temperature decreases from 450 to 300 C. Forty percent of the heat loss, transformed into useful turbine work, is formed due to the heat generated in the recombination of NO and O2. In the low-pressure turbine, 50 percent of the turbine work is formed in this way. The intensity of heat transfer processes in the chemically reactive system is 5-8 times higher than in air systems, and 3-4 times higher than in steam systems.