REVIEW PAPER Performance improvement of supercritical carbon dioxide power cycles through its integration with bottoming heat recovery cycles and advanced heat exchanger design: A review Ramy H. Mohammed 1 | Ali Sulaiman Alsagri 2 | Xiaolin Wang 3 1 Department of Mechanical Power Engineering, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering – Unaizah, Qassim University, Saudi Arabia 3 School of Engineering, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia Correspondence Ali Sulaiman Alsagri, Mechanical Engineering Department, Unayzah College of Engineering, Qassim University, 51911, Saudi Arabia. Email: a.alsagri@qu.edu.sa Summary In this article, the performance improvement of supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO 2 ) Brayton cycles through heat recovery and advanced heat exchanger (HX) design is reviewed. The configuration of sCO 2 cycles and the bottleneck of the design of an efficient sCO 2 cycle is first evaluated. It was found that heat rejected in the precooler is a large waste that could potentially enhance the overall sCO 2 system performance. Then integration of the absorption cycle, organic Rankine cycle, and thermal desalination plant to the sCO 2 cycle to recover the waste thermal energy is reviewed and discussed. Results showed that these bottoming heat recovery cycles could substantially improve the over- all sCO 2 system efficiency. The combined system of sCO 2 /absorption chiller, sCO 2 /ORC increases the cycle efficiency to about 78% and 79%, respectively. Also, a combined system of sCO 2 /desalination produces about 200 000 m 3 /day with a cost of less than $1.0/m 3 . Based on the review, the evaluation criteria are proposed for decision-makers. Another bottleneck of the design of the sCO 2 system is the HXs (recuperators) used in the sCO 2 cycle which are rela- tively large and negatively affect the cycle compactness and performance. Therefore, various types of recuperators proposed and designed for sCO 2 cycles are reviewed and evaluated. This review highlights the need for further research to enhance heat recovery, reduce the cost of bottoming cycles, and improve the design of HXs. KEYWORDS cogeneration, decision-making, exergy destruction, heat recovery, supercritical CO 2 cycle 1 | INTRODUCTION The performance of electrical power generation cycles is dramatically affected by the working fluid. Many working fluids such as air, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and different mixtures have been evaluated for conventional power plants. Among these candidates, the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO 2 ) power cycle is one of the favorable alter- natives due to its high thermal performance. In the last decades, a large number of scientific researches about the development of sCO 2 power cycles have been reported in international journals and conferences, reflecting the worldwide interest. Specific meetings in this topic are regularly organized such as the sCO 2 Power Cycle Received: 28 September 2019 Revised: 30 January 2020 Accepted: 15 February 2020 DOI: 10.1002/er.5319 Int J Energy Res. 2020;1–28. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/er © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1