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Investigation on a small-scale pumpless Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system driven by the low temperature heat source

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Long Jiang, Professor Tony Roskilly

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).


Abstract

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd A small-scale pumpless Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system driven by the low temperature heat source is established to investigate the overall performance. Hot water temperature from 75 °C to 95 °C is adopted for performance analysis whereas the environmental temperature is about 25 °C. Refrigerant R245fa is selected as working fluid, and scroll expander is employed for power generation. One worth noting fact is that pumpless ORC system shows great potential for low temperature heat recovery. Experimental results indicate that the maximum power output is 232 W, which is obtained at 95 °C hot water inlet temperature. Correspondingly, the average power output is 204 W which is lasted for 6.6 min, revealing the high stability for power generation. For different hot water inlet temperature, the highest energy and exergy efficiency of the system are 2.4% and 13.7%. Besides, performance of novel pumpless ORC system is compared with that of our previous prototype. It shows a remarkable improvement in terms of power output, energy efficiency and exergy efficiency. Power generation process is able to keep constant for 95% of the cycle time. As a result, pumpless ORC may become an alternative solution to low grade heat utilization when compared with conventional small-scale ORC.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Jiang L, Lu HT, Wang LW, Gao P, Zhu FQ, Wang RZ, Roskilly AP

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Applied Energy

Year: 2017

Volume: 195

Pages: 478-486

Print publication date: 01/06/2017

Online publication date: 24/03/2017

Acceptance date: 17/03/2017

Date deposited: 24/05/2017

ISSN (print): 0306-2619

ISSN (electronic): 1872-9118

Publisher: Pergamon Press

URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.03.082

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.03.082


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