Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics of a Closed Blade Cascade Wind Tunnel for Organic Vapors

Author(s):  
Felix Reinker ◽  
Karsten Hasselmann ◽  
Stefan aus der Wiesche ◽  
Eugeny Y. Kenig

The Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) offers great potential for waste heat recovery and use of low-temperature sources for power generation. However, the ORC thermal efficiency is limited by the relatively low temperature level, and it is, therefore, of major importance to design ORC components with high efficiencies and minimized losses. The use of organic fluids creates new challenges for turbine design, due to dense gas behavior and the low speed of sound. The design and performance predictions for steam and gas turbines have been initially based on measurements and numerical simulations of flow through two-dimensional cascades of blades. In case of ORC turbines and related fluids, such an approach requires the use of a specially designed closed cascade wind tunnel. In this contribution the design and process engineering of a continuous running wind tunnel for organic vapors is presented. The wind tunnel can be operated with heavy weight organic working fluids within a broad range of pressure and temperature levels. For this reason, the use of classical design rules for atmospheric wind tunnels is limited. The thermodynamic cycle process in the closed wind tunnel is modeled and simulated by means of a professional power plant analysis tool, including a database for the ORC fluid properties under consideration. The wind tunnel is designed as a pressure vessel system and this leads to significant challenges particular for the employed wide angle diffuser, settling chamber, and nozzle. Detailed computational fluid dynamics analyses (CFD) were performed in order to optimize the important wind tunnel sections.

Author(s):  
Felix Reinker ◽  
Karsten Hasselmann ◽  
Stefan aus der Wiesche ◽  
Eugeny Y. Kenig

The organic Rankine cycle (ORC) offers great potential for waste heat recovery and use of low-temperature sources for power generation. However, the ORC thermal efficiency is limited by the relatively low-temperature level, and it is, therefore, of major importance to design ORC components with high efficiencies and minimized losses. The use of organic fluids creates new challenges for turbine design, due to dense gas behavior and the low speed of sound. The design and performance predictions for steam and gas turbines have been initially based on measurements and numerical simulations of flow through two-dimensional cascades of blades. In case of ORC turbines and related fluids, such an approach requires the use of a specially designed closed cascade wind tunnel. In this contribution the design and process engineering of a continuous running wind tunnel for organic vapors is presented. The wind tunnel can be operated with heavy weight organic working fluids within a broad range of pressure and temperature levels. For this reason, the use of classical design rules for atmospheric wind tunnels is limited. The thermodynamic cycle process in the closed wind tunnel is modeled, and simulated by means of a professional power plant analysis tool, including a database for the ORC fluid properties under consideration. The wind tunnel is designed as a pressure vessel system and this leads to significant challenges particular for the employed wide angle diffuser, settling chamber, and nozzle. Detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was performed in order to optimize the important wind tunnel sections.


Author(s):  
Fabrizio Reale ◽  
Vincenzo Iannotta ◽  
Raffaele Tuccillo

The primary need of reducing pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions has led to new energy scenarios. The interest of research community is mainly focused on the development of energy systems based on renewable resources and energy storage systems and smart energy grids. In the latter case small scale energy systems can become of interest as nodes of distributed energy systems. In this context micro gas turbines (MGT) can play a key role thanks to their flexibility and a strategy to increase their overall efficiency is to integrate gas turbines with a bottoming cycle. In this paper the authors analyze the possibility to integrate a MGT with a super critical CO2 Brayton cycle turbine (sCO2 GT) as a bottoming cycle (BC). A 0D thermodynamic analysis is used to highlight opportunities and critical aspects also by a comparison with another integrated energy system in which the waste heat recovery (WHR) is obtained by the adoption of an organic Rankine cycle (ORC). While ORC is widely used in case of middle and low temperature of the heat source, s-CO2 BC is a new method in this field of application. One of the aim of the analysis is to verify if this choice can be comparable with ORC for this operative range, with a medium-low value of exhaust gases and very small power values. The studied MGT is a Turbec T100P.


2019 ◽  
Vol 142 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Tareq Chowdhury ◽  
Esmail M. A. Mokheimer

Abstract Even though the renewable technologies are getting a gradually increasing share of the energy industry, the momentum of its growth is far away from outweighing the dominance of fossil fuel. Due to the concern for ozone depletion, global warming, and many more environmental hazards caused by fossil fuels, it is essential to substitute the conventional energy sources with renewables. Since this replacement cannot be done overnight, the conventional energy technologies should be integrated with renewables to minimize the pace of adverse effects on fossil fuel–based industries in the meantime. This way, the industries can be more efficient by utilizing waste heat, which accounts for 50% of the total energy generated now. This review paper outlines the role of solar energy in the generation of power and cooling systems that are capable of utilizing low-temperature heat sources below 400 °C. The review is primarily concentrated on line-focused concentrated solar power (CSP)-assisted solar technologies to be integrated with organic Rankine cycle (ORC) and absorption cooling systems. Photovoltaic and similar multigeneration systems are also discussed in brief.


Author(s):  
Andrea Meroni ◽  
Jesper Graa Andreasen ◽  
Leonardo Pierobon ◽  
Fredrik Haglind

Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) power systems represent attractive solutions for power conversion from low temperature heat sources, and the use of these power systems is gaining increasing attention in the marine industry. This paper proposes the combined optimal design of cycle and expander for an organic Rankine cycle unit utilizing waste heat from low temperature heat sources. The study addresses a case where the minimum temperature of the heat source is constrained and a case where no constraint is imposed. The former case is the waste heat recovery from jacket cooling water of a marine diesel engine onboard a large ship, and the latter is representative of a low-temperature geothermal, solar or waste heat recovery application. Multi-component working fluids are investigated, as they allow improving the match between the temperature profiles in the heat exchangers and, consequently, reducing the irreversibility in the ORC system. This work considers mixtures of R245fa/pentane and propane/isobutane. The use of multi-component working fluids typically results in increased heat transfer areas and different expander designs compared to pure fluids. In order to properly account for turbine performance and design constraints in the cycle calculation, the thermodynamic cycle and the turbine are optimized simultaneously in the molar composition range of each mixture. Such novel optimization approach enables one to identify to which extent the cycle or the turbine behaviour influences the selection of the optimal solution. It also enables one to find the composition for which an optimal compromise between cycle and turbine performance is achieved. The optimal ORC unit employs pure R245fa and provides approximately 200 kW when the minimum hot fluid temperature is constrained. Conversely, the mixture R245fa/pentane (0.5/0.5) is selected and provides approximately 444 kW when the hot fluid temperature is not constrained to a lower value. In both cases, a compact and efficient turbine can be manufactured.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gábor Györke ◽  
Axel Groniewsky ◽  
Attila Imre

One of the most crucial challenges of sustainable development is the use of low-temperature heat sources (60–200 °C), such as thermal solar, geothermal, biomass, or waste heat, for electricity production. Since conventional water-based thermodynamic cycles are not suitable in this temperature range or at least operate with very low efficiency, other working fluids need to be applied. Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) uses organic working fluids, which results in higher thermal efficiency for low-temperature heat sources. Traditionally, new working fluids are found using a trial-and-error procedure through experience among chemically similar materials. This approach, however, carries a high risk of excluding the ideal working fluid. Therefore, a new method and a simple rule of thumb—based on a correlation related to molar isochoric specific heat capacity of saturated vapor states—were developed. With the application of this thumb rule, novel isentropic and dry working fluids can be found applicable for given low-temperature heat sources. Additionally, the importance of molar quantities—usually ignored by energy engineers—was demonstrated.


Energy ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 93 ◽  
pp. 1886-1895 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhong Ge ◽  
Hua Wang ◽  
Hui-Tao Wang ◽  
Jian-Jun Wang ◽  
Ming Li ◽  
...  

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