Performance Analysis of a Novel PXS With Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) System

Author(s):  
Shengjun Zhang

With the increasing of core thermal power of the nuclear power plant, the decay heat of the core increases in the accident. Therefore, the heat removal capacity of the PXS should be enhanced to fulfill the requirement of core safety. A new scheme is put forward to improve the cooling capacity of PXS and provides long-term power for station blackout (SBO) accident or loss of normal feedwater. In this system, the Organic Rankine Cycle is incorporated between the hot leg and cold leg of PRHR. The decay heat of the core is the heat source and the cooling pool outside the containment is the cool source. The natural circulation of the primary loop is established due to the density difference. The primary fluid flows into the evaporator of the ORC system, where the working fluid of the ORC system is evaporated. Then the temperature of the primary fluid is decreased. The vaporized working fluid drives the expander, which is coaxially fixed with the fluid pump, to generate the power. Finally, the exhausted vapor flows into the condenser and the residual heat is discharged outside of the containment simultaneously. The working fluid in the condenser is pumped into the evaporator by the fluid pump for liquid supplement and the cycle keeps on working continuously. A steady state analysis is performed on a 1700MWe nuclear power plant with ORC as the heat removal system. The heat transfer area of the ORC evaporator is fixed as 487.7m2, which is the same as the area of PRHR HX. The efficiencies of fluid pump and expander of ORC system are assumed as 0.75 and 0.8, respectively. The decay heat of the core is about 67.62MWe, which is 1.38% of the core full power. The working fluids are screened and R141b offers excellent performance. The efficiency of fluid pump and expander are assumed as 0.75 and 0.8, respectively. The condensing temperature is assumed as 80°C and the evaporating temperature is 160°C. The results show that 7.83MWe will be generated by the ORC system and the heat transfer area of the condenser is about 994.5m2. The residual heat of 59.79MWe will be discharged to the water tank outside the containment.

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2737
Author(s):  
Francesca Ceglia ◽  
Adriano Macaluso ◽  
Elisa Marrasso ◽  
Maurizio Sasso ◽  
Laura Vanoli

Improvements in using geothermal sources can be attained through the installation of power plants taking advantage of low and medium enthalpy available in poorly exploited geothermal sites. Geothermal fluids at medium and low temperature could be considered to feed binary cycle power plants using organic fluids for electricity “production” or in cogeneration configuration. The improvement in the use of geothermal aquifers at low-medium enthalpy in small deep sites favours the reduction of drilling well costs, and in addition, it allows the exploitation of local resources in the energy districts. The heat exchanger evaporator enables the thermal heat exchange between the working fluid (which is commonly an organic fluid for an Organic Rankine Cycle) and the geothermal fluid (supplied by the aquifer). Thus, it has to be realised taking into account the thermodynamic proprieties and chemical composition of the geothermal field. The geothermal fluid is typically very aggressive, and it leads to the corrosion of steel traditionally used in the heat exchangers. This paper analyses the possibility of using plastic material in the constructions of the evaporator installed in an Organic Rankine Cycle plant in order to overcome the problems of corrosion and the increase of heat exchanger thermal resistance due to the fouling effect. A comparison among heat exchangers made of commonly used materials, such as carbon, steel, and titanium, with alternative polymeric materials has been carried out. This analysis has been built in a mathematical approach using the correlation referred to in the literature about heat transfer in single-phase and two-phase fluids in a tube and/or in the shell side. The outcomes provide the heat transfer area for the shell and tube heat exchanger with a fixed thermal power size. The results have demonstrated that the plastic evaporator shows an increase of 47.0% of the heat transfer area but an economic installation cost saving of 48.0% over the titanium evaporator.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-24
Author(s):  
Malik El’Houyoun Ahamadi ◽  
Hery T. Rakotondramiarana

In the ylang-ylang essential oil distillers in Anjouan Island, the used energy is 100% firewood biomass. A large amount of this energy is dissipated in the environment just in the combustion chamber itself. As it turns out, the flue gases in this process take away the most part of it. Thus, in a process of energy efficiency of stills, the present work aims at assessing the possibility to convert the residual heat from the process into electricity. For that purpose, energy and exergy modeling of an organic Rankine cycle was implemented. It was found that a large amount of exergy is destroyed in the evaporator. Similarly, it emerges that the exergy efficiency of the cycle depends on the inlet temperatures of the exhaust gases in the evaporator and on the inlet pressure of the working fluid in the turbine, and that it is much better for low exhaust gas temperatures. At these low values of gas temperatures, it appears that the improvement in exergy efficiency and energy efficiency are linked to the increase in the inlet pressure of the working fluid in the turbine. It follows from the obtained results that the discharged hot water and the residual heat of gases having temperatures ranging from 180°C to 300 °C, could be used for power production which can reach electrical powers between 1.4kW and 4.5kW  


2021 ◽  
Vol 236 ◽  
pp. 01018
Author(s):  
Chongju Hu ◽  
Wangli Huang ◽  
Zhizhong Jiang ◽  
Qunying Huang ◽  
Yunqing Bai ◽  
...  

.A lead-based reactor with employing heat pipes as passive residual heat removal system (PRHRS) for longterm decay heat removal was designed. Three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software FLUENT was adopted to simulate the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of the PRHRS under Station-Black-Out (SBO) accident condition. The results showed that heat in the core could be removed smoothly by the PRHRS, and the core temperature difference is less than 20 K.


Author(s):  
Claudia Graß ◽  
Anne Krüssenberg ◽  
Rudi Kulenovic ◽  
Fabian Weyermann ◽  
Jörg Starflinger ◽  
...  

New concepts are currently being discussed for passive residual-heat removal with heat pipes from spent-fuel pools and wet-storage facilities. Because of their high heat-transport capability and their simple design, two-phase closed thermosiphons have a great potential to satisfy the demands of a reliable and independent passive heat removal. The geometry of spent-fuel pools and the potential incorporation into existing plants requires thermosiphons of at least 10 m in length including bends. Such thermosiphons are neither available nor have they been investigated yet. Therefore, experimental and numerical investigations are being carried out. At IKE the basic operational behavior of 10-m-long thermosiphons with water — as working fluid — are being experimentally investigated. Measurements for different pipe diameters (32 mm and 45 mm) are performed at various heat sink temperatures (10 °C, 20 °C and 30 °C), heat inputs (1000 W to 4000 W), and filling ratios (50%, 70% and 100%). GRS is developing codes, such as AC2, in order to simulate all relevant phenomena within a nuclear power plant during normal operation, incidents, accidents, and severe accidents. Regarding passive residual-heat removal with thermosiphons, the models of AC2 are being improved to properly simulate the thermos-hydraulics of this heat transfer process. Starting with the module ATHLET (Analysis of Thermal-hydraulic of Leaks and Transients), the applicability of its existing models is checked for modeling long thermosiphons and calculating their operational behavior. The main model improvements are being validated against the new experiments of IKE.


Author(s):  
Jianhui Yu

Similar to the traditional nuclear power plant (NPP), the Accumulator (ACC) of AP1000 is one of the most important facility against Large-Break LOCA (LBLOCA). Following a LBLOCA, the Reactor Coolant System (RCS) pressure will be decreased rapidly. And the Core Makeup Tank (CMT) and Passive Residual Heat Removal (PRHR) will be actuated following “S” signal. However, the transient is so rapid that the CMT and PRHR could not be actuated timely, because the ACC will inject water into the reactor vessel downcomer through Direct Vessel Injection (DVI) line and it will stop the CMT injection immediately when RCS has depressurized to the ACC pressure. Therefore, the ACC configuration is very important to LBLOCA mitigation for AP1000. And the Peak Cladding Temperature (PCT) highly relies on ACC configuration. Several sets of different configuration of both ACC, including initial pressure and initial water volume, are discussed. Different initial conditions (e.g. ACC initial pressure) are considered in the sensitivity study on ACC depressurization phase by phase. WCOBRA/TRAC code was used to perform the LBLOCA sensitivity study. The results of each sensitivity case are presented and analyzed. And the suggestion of how to make the optimal ACC configuration is provided in this paper.


Author(s):  
Masanori Naitoh ◽  
Marco Pellegrini ◽  
Hiroaki Suzuki ◽  
Hideo Mizouchi ◽  
Hidetoshi Okada

This paper describes analysis results of the early phase accident progression of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) Unit 1 by the severe accident analysis code SAMPSON. The isolation condensers were the only devices for decay heat removal at Unit 1, but they stopped after the loss of AC and DC powers. Since there were no decay heat removal for about 14 hours after their termination until the start of alternative water injection into the core by the fire engine, the core melt and the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) bottom failure occurred resulting in large amount of fission products release into the environment. The original SAMPSON was improved by adding new modellings for the phenomena which have been deemed specific to the Fukushima Daiichi NPP: (1) deterioration of SRV gaskets and (2) buckling of in-core-monitor housings which caused the early steam leakage from the core into the drywell, and (3) melt of the in-core-monitor housings in the lower plenum of the RPV. The analysis results showed that (1) 55.3% of UO2 of the initial loading and 66.1% of the core material including UO2, zircaloy, steel and control materials had melted down into the pedestal of the drywell, (2) the amount of Hydrogen generated by Zr-H2O reaction was 686 kg, (3) amount of Cs element released from fuels was 61 kg which was 72% of the total Cs element which was included in fuels at the initiation of the accident, and (4) 18.3% of the corium which fell into the pedestal was one large lump and the 81.7% was particulate corium.


2020 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 10906
Author(s):  
Jeroen Schoenmaker ◽  
Pâmella Gonçalves Martins ◽  
Guilherme Corsi Miranda da Silva ◽  
Julio Carlos Teixeira

Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) systems are increasingly gaining relevance in the renewable and sustainable energy scenario. Recently our research group published a manuscript identifying a new type of thermodynamic cycle entitled Buoyancy Organic Rankine Cycle (BORC) [J. Schoenmaker, J.F.Q. Rey, K.R. Pirota, Renew. Energy 36, 999 (2011)]. In this work we present two main contributions. First, we propose a refined thermodynamic model for BORC systems accounting for the specific heat of the working fluid. Considering the refined model, the efficiencies for Pentane and Dichloromethane at temperatures up to 100 °C were estimated to be 17.2%. Second, we show a proof of concept BORC system using a 3 m tall, 0.062 m diameter polycarbonate tube as a column-fluid reservoir. We used water as a column fluid. The thermal stability and uniformity throughout the tube has been carefully simulated and verified experimentally. After the thermal parameters of the water column have been fully characterized, we developed a test body to allow an adequate assessment of the BORC-system's efficiency. We obtained 0.84% efficiency for 43.8 °C working temperature. This corresponds to 35% of the Carnot efficiency calculated for the same temperature difference. Limitations of the model and the apparatus are put into perspective, pointing directions for further developments of BORC systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1984
Author(s):  
Ramin Moradi ◽  
Emanuele Habib ◽  
Enrico Bocci ◽  
Luca Cioccolanti

Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) systems are some of the most suitable technologies to produce electricity from low-temperature waste heat. In this study, a non-regenerative, micro-scale ORC system was tested in off-design conditions using R134a as the working fluid. The experimental data were then used to tune the semi-empirical models of the main components of the system. Eventually, the models were used in a component-oriented system solver to map the system electric performance at varying operating conditions. The analysis highlighted the non-negligible impact of the plunger pump on the system performance Indeed, the experimental results showed that the low pump efficiency in the investigated operating range can lead to negative net electric power in some working conditions. For most data points, the expander and the pump isentropic efficiencies are found in the approximate ranges of 35% to 55% and 17% to 34%, respectively. Furthermore, the maximum net electric power was about 200 W with a net electric efficiency of about 1.2%, thus also stressing the importance of a proper selection of the pump for waste heat recovery applications.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
G.E. Pateropoulos ◽  
T.G. Efstathiadis ◽  
A.I. Kalfas

ABSTRACT The potential to recover waste heat from the exhaust gases of a turboprop engine and produce useful work through an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is investigated. A thermodynamic analysis of the engine’s Brayton cycle is derived to determine the heat source available for exploitation. The aim is to use the aircraft engine fuel as the working fluid of the organic Rankine cycle in order to reduce the extra weight of the waste heat recovery system and keep the thrust-to-weight ratio as high as possible. A surrogate fuel with thermophysical properties similar to aviation gas turbine fuel is used for the ORC simulation. The evaporator design as well as the weight minimisation and safety of the suggested application are the most crucial aspects determining the feasibility of the proposed concept. The results show that there is potential in the exhaust gases to produce up to 50kW of power, corresponding to a 10.1% improvement of the overall thermal efficiency of the engine.


Author(s):  
W Gu ◽  
Y Weng ◽  
Y Wang ◽  
B Zheng

This article describes and evaluates an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) for a waste heat recovery system by both theoretical and experimental studies. Theoretical analysis of several working fluids shows that cycle efficiency is very sensitive to evaporating pressure, but insensitive to expander inlet temperature. Second law analysis was carried out using R600a as a working fluid and a flow of hot air as a heat source, which is not isothermal, along the evaporator. The result discloses that the evaporator's internal and external entropy generation is the main source of total entropy generation. The effect of the heat source temperature, evaporating pressure, and evaporator size on the entropy generation rate is also presented. The obtained useful power is directly linked to the total entropy generation rate according to the Gouy—Stodola theorem. The ORC testing system was established and operated using R600a as a working fluid and hot water as a heat source. The maximum cycle efficiency of the testing system is 5.2 per cent, and the testing result also proves that cycle efficiency is insensitive to heat source temperature, but sensitive to evaporating pressure. The entropy result also shows that internal and external entropy of the evaporator is the main source of total entropy generation.


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