Compact heat exchangers for supercritical CO2 power cycle application

•Compact heat exchangers for S-CO2 power cycle application are introduced.•The heat transfer mechanisms and correlations are described and summarized.•Thermal hydraulic performances of respective compact heat exchangers are compared. This paper first presents a review of compact heat exchanger technology for a supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) power cycle application to provide holistic insights for designing a power system and selecting appropriate heat exchangers. This is because a compact heat exchanger plays a key role in the S-CO2 power system to have small footprint while maintaining structural integrity. The developments and characteristics of various compact heat exchangers are briefly described, and their heat transfer mechanisms and correlations obtained from open literatures are summarized, enabling the researchers to obtain information quickly for their needs. From the selected correlations, thermal hydraulic performances of compact heat exchangers are compared for the S-CO2 recuperator operating region.