Brayton Energy: Analytical Design

Tools: Solidworks, ANSYS, Materials research

Concentrated solar power (CSP) plants can be used to extract energy from the sun, but require operating at incredibly high temperatures (over 700°C).

During the summer of 2019, I worked as an intern at Brayton Energy designing parts for a CSP plant. Most notably, I performed the analytical design of an intake header for a ultra-high temperature heat exchanger which transfers thermal energy from the sun to CO².

This part was required to last 30 years and facilitate homogeneous flow of CO² through the heat exchanger. Structural and fluid simulations were ran to characterize the part’s behavior over a number of input dimensions (such as intake diameter, fin width, etc). Results from these simulations were plotted to advise future designs.

Outside of this main project, I did some materials research and designed experiments to find the best materials for the heat exchanger.