In today?s world, we are facing the problem of fossil fuel depletion along
with its cost continuously increasing. Also, it is getting difficult to live
in a pollution free environment. Solar energy is one of the most abundantly
and freely available form of energy. Out of the various ways to harness
solar en-ergy, solar thermal energy is the most efficient as compared to
photo-voltaic technology. There are various cycles to convert the solar
thermal energy to mechanical work, but Kalina cycle (KC) is one of the best
candidates for high efficiency considerations. Therefore, the authors have
proposed a novel KC having the double separator arrangements to increase the
amount of ammonia vapors at the inlet of turbine, and hence have tried to
minimize the pumping power for Double Separator Kalina Cycle (DS-KC) by
reducing the fraction of gas/vapors through it. Here, in this paper we have
tried to com-pare Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC), Brayton Cycle (BC) and Double
Sepa-rator Kalina Cycle (DS-KC) for low temperature heat extraction from
para-bolic trough collectors having arc-circular plug with slits (PTC). The
effect of different operating conditions; like the number of PTCs, mass flow
rate of fluids in different cycles, pressure difference in turbine are
analyzed. The ef-fect of these different operating conditions on different
parameters like net work done, heat lost by condenser, thermal efficiency
and installation cost per unit kW for DS-KC, ORC and BC are studied.