Scaling a radial flow turbine from air to multiple compressible fluids and performance evaluation using computational fluid dynamics

Author(s):  
K Vijayaraj ◽  
Punit Singh

Many new turbine designs may take large timelines to prove their worth. For getting duty condition at optimum efficiency, one can always scale speed, diameter, if a very efficient benchmark is available. This paper examines the similarity-based scaling strategy to develop radial inflow turbines for different compressible fluids from a well-established NASA radial flow turbine designed and experimentally tested with air as the working fluid. The NASA 1730 air turbine experimental data have been used as the benchmark here and adopted multiple fluids to understand scaling. The considered fluids are supercritical carbon dioxide for the Brayton cycle, helium for the cryogenic liquefaction cycle, and R143a for the organic Rankine cycle. The uniqueness here is to have three types of cycles, viz. closed-loop Brayton cycle, organic Rankine cycle, and cryogenic helium liquefaction cycle, which employ different working fluids, adapting the same NASA turbine geometry. This paper has described the scaling methodology and presented the simulated turbine performance of SCO2, helium, and R143a using computational fluid dynamics. The dimensionless curves for these fluids are plotted on the corresponding experimental characteristics of the NASA turbine. Out of the three fluids, SCO2 showed the perfect Mach number matching for the flow and torque coefficient curves. The Mach number deviations in the case of helium were small, and the variations were slightly higher for R143a. The efficiencies were the highest for R143a, followed by SCO2 and helium. Thus, the scaling was found to be effective in all cases. Thus, the standard turbomachinery space developed for air as fluid can be used effectively for the development of turboexpanders for various cycles with different working fluids without redesigning the entire shape using similarity-based scaling. The benchmark NASA 1730 turbine has proven this in three special cases. This paper is not against designing new machines but is only trying to say that when such good benchmark machines like NASA 1730 turbine is available; designers must use the power of similitude to adapt it to match new fluids and new conditions.

Author(s):  
Arun Kumar Narasimhan ◽  
Diego Guillen Perez ◽  
D. Yogi Goswami

Abstract Scroll expanders are generally used for low temperature power generation applications due to their inherently small built-in volume ratio. The working fluid and operating conditions play an important role in the expander performance as well as its physical size and volume ratio. Hence, a comparative study of scroll expander performance was carried out between two different working fluids, R433C and supercritical (s-CO2). The s-CO2 Brayton cycle achieved a maximum cycle efficiency of 13.6% at an expander supply pressure of 11 MPa. Two separate scroll geometries were modeled for supercritical Organic Rankine Cycle (SORC) using R433C and s-CO2 Brayton cycle for the operating conditions that provided the maximum cycle performance. The s-CO2 scroll geometry achieved a maximum expander efficiency of 80% with a volume ratio of 2.5 and a diameter of 19 cm. The high inlet temperatures required a much higher volume ratio of 6.2 and scroll diameter of 30 cm for the R433C based SORC leading to greater leakages and lower expander efficiency of 62%. The comparative study shows that s-CO2 is better suited for scroll expander than R433C at such high expander supply temperatures.


2018 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 01012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herry Susanto ◽  
Kamaruddin Abdullah ◽  
Aep Saepul Uyun ◽  
Syukri Muhammad Nur ◽  
Teuku Meurah Indra Mahlia

In recent years, due to its feasibility and reliability, the organic rankine cycle has become a widespread concern and is the subject of research. In the organic rankine cycle system, the radial turbine component is a highly influential component of the high low performance resulting. This paper discusses the design of radial turbines for organic rankine cycle systems. The design stage consists of preliminary design and detail design with parametric methods on the working fluid R22 to determine the geometry and initial estimation of the performance of the radial turbine. After that, a numerical study of the fluid flow region in the radial turbine with R22 as the working fluid was performed. The analysis was performed using computational fluid dynamics of Autodesk Computational Fluid Dynamics Motion software on two models of real gas, k-epsilon and shear stress transport. From the results of this analysis, there is pressure, velocity and temperature distribution along the radial turbine blades and estimated performance under various operating conditions. Comparison between parametric and computational fluid dynamics analysis results show different performance. The difference is due to the computational fluid dynamics analysis already involving the real gas shear stress transport model.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suresh Baral

The current research study focuses on the feasibility of stand-alone hybrid solar-geothermal organic Rankine cycle (ORC) technology for power generation from hot springs of Bhurung Tatopani, Myagdi, Nepal. For the study, the temperature of the hot spring was measured on the particular site of the heat source of the hot spring. The measured temperature could be used for operating the ORC system. Temperature of hot spring can also further be increased by adopting the solar collector for rising the temperature. This hybrid type of the system can have a high-temperature heat source which could power more energy from ORC technology. There are various types of organic working fluids available on the market, but R134a and R245fa are environmentally friendly and have low global warming potential candidates. The thermodynamic models have been developed for predicting the performance analysis of the system. The input parameter for the model is the temperature which was measured experimentally. The maximum temperature of the hot spring was found to be 69.7°C. Expander power output, thermal efficiency, heat of evaporation, solar collector area, and hybrid solar ORC system power output and efficiency are the outputs from the developed model. From the simulation, it was found that 1 kg/s of working fluid could produce 17.5 kW and 22.5 kW power output for R134a and R245fa, respectively, when the geothermal source temperature was around 70°C. Later when the hot spring was heated with a solar collector, the power output produced were 25 kW and 30 kW for R134a and R245fa, respectively, when the heat source was 99°C. The study also further determines the cost of electricity generation for the system with working fluids R134a and R245fa to be $0.17/kWh and $0.14/kWh, respectively. The levelised cost of the electricity (LCOE) was $0.38/kWh in order to be highly feasible investment. The payback period for such hybrid system was found to have 7.5 years and 10.5 years for R245fa and R134a, respectively.


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.


2013 ◽  
Vol 805-806 ◽  
pp. 649-653
Author(s):  
Bing Zhang ◽  
Shuang Yang ◽  
Jin Liang Xu ◽  
Guang Lin Liu

The optimum working conditions of 11 working fluids under different heat source temperatures for an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) were located in our previous work. In the current work, the system irreversibility of each candidate were calculated and compared at their optimal operating conditions. Obvious variation trends of both the cycle efficiency and irreversibility were found for different types of organic fluids. It is suggested, when selecting working fluid for our ORC system, the critical temperature should be as close as possible to the heat source temperature to achieve high cycle efficiency but avoid large irreversibility. The relationships between the structure of the molecules and the critical temperature of the working fluids are investigated qualitatively and potentially meaningful for the rational selection of proper organic fluids for certain ORCs.


2013 ◽  
Vol 448-453 ◽  
pp. 3270-3276
Author(s):  
Yu Ping Wang ◽  
Yi Wu Weng ◽  
Ping Yang ◽  
Lei Tang

In this paper, three typical working fluids were selected for the near-critical ORC and subcritical ORC. The difference of performance between the near-critical ORC and subcritical ORC was analyzed by establishing the thermodynamic model. The reason for difference was analyzed in terms of the thermophysical properties. The results indicate that the performance of the near-critical ORC is better than the subcritical ORC. The net absorbed heat, net power and efficiency of the near-critical ORC vary slowly with the vapor generation temperature, which means that the near-critical ORC has good off-design performance. The dry working fluid R236fa is best adapted for the near-critical ORC among the three working fluids. The singular performance of the near-critical ORC depends on the properties of latent heat and type of working fluid in near-critical region.


1991 ◽  
Vol 113 (3) ◽  
pp. 131-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aristide Massardo

Space power technologies have undergone significant advances over the past few years, and great emphasis is being placed on the development of dynamic power systems at this time. A design study has been conducted to evaluate the applicability of a combined cycle concept—closed Brayton cycle and organic Rankine cycle coupling—for solar dynamic space power generation systems. In the concept presented here (solar dynamic combined cycle), the waste heat rejected by the closed Brayton cycle working fluid is utilized to heat the organic working fluid of an organic Rankine cycle system. This allows the solar dynamic combined cycle efficiency to be increased compared to the efficiencies of two subsystems (closed Brayton cycle and organic fluid cycle). Also, for small-size space power systems (up to 50 kW), the efficiency of the solar dynamic combined cycle can be comparable with Stirling engine performance. The closed Brayton cycle and organic Rankine cycle designs are based on a great deal of maturity assessed in much previous work on terrestrial and solar dynamic power systems. This is not yet true for the Stirling cycles. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the performance of the new space power generation system (solar dynamic combined cycle). The significant benefits of the solar dynamic combined cycle concept such as efficiency increase, mass reduction, specific area—collector and radiator—reduction, are presented and discussed for a low earth orbit space station application.


Author(s):  
L. Sciacovelli ◽  
P. Cinnella

Transonic flows through axial, multistage, transcritical organic rankine cycle (ORC) turbines are investigated by using a numerical solver including advanced multiparameter equations of state and a high-order discretization scheme. The working fluids in use are the refrigerants R134a and R245fa, classified as dense gases due to their complex molecules and relatively high molecular weight. Both inviscid and viscous numerical simulations are carried out to quantify the impact of dense gas effects and viscous effects on turbine performance. Both supercritical and subcritical inlet conditions are studied for the considered working fluids. In the former case, flow across the turbine is transcritical, since turbine output pressure is subcritical. Numerical results show that, due to dense gas effects characterizing the flow at supercritical inlet conditions, supercritical ORC turbines enable, for a given pressure ratio, a higher isentropic efficiency than subcritical turbines using the same working fluid. Moreover, for the selected operating conditions, R134a provides a better performance than R245fa.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 4140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Costante M. Invernizzi ◽  
Abubakr Ayub ◽  
Gioele Di Marcoberardino ◽  
Paolo Iora

This study investigates the use of pure and hydrocarbons binary mixtures as potential alternatives working fluids in a usual biomass powered organic Rankine cycle (ORC). A typical biomass combined heat and power plant installed in Cremona (Italy) is considered as the benchmark. Eight pure hydrocarbons (linear and cyclic) and four binary mixtures of linear hydrocarbons were selected. The critical points of the binary mixtures at different composition were calculated using an in-house code developed in MATLAB© (R2018b) environment. Based on the critical point of a working fluid, supercritical and subcritical cycle configurations of ORC were analysed. A detailed thermodynamic comparison with benchmark cycle was carried out in view of cycle efficiency, maximum operating pressure, size of the turbine and heat exchangers. The supercritical cycles showed 0.02 to 0.03 points lower efficiency, whereas, subcritical cycles showed comparable efficiencies than that of the benchmark cycle. The cycles operating with hydrocarbons (pure and mixtures) exhibited considerably lower volume flow ratios in turbine which indicates lower turbine size. Also, size parameter of regenerator is comparatively lower due to the lower molecular complexity of the hydrocarbons. A noticeable increase in turbine power output was observed with change in composition of the iso-octane/n-octane binary mixture at the same thermodynamic efficiency.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 1865 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin Blondel ◽  
Nicolas Tauveron ◽  
Nadia Caney ◽  
Nicolas Voeltzel

The Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is widely used in industry to recover low-grade heat. Recently, some research on the ORC has focused on micro power production with new low global warming potential (GWP) replacement working fluids. However, few experimental tests have investigated the real performance level of this system in comparison with the ORC using classical fluids. This study concerns the experimental analysis and comparison of a compact (0.25 m3) Organic Rankine Cycle installation using as working fluids the NovecTM649 pure fluid and a zeotropic mixture composed of 80% NovecTM649 and 20% HFE7000 (mass composition) for low-grade waste heat conversion to produce low power. The purpose of this experimental test bench is to study replacement fluids and characterize them as possible replacement fluid candidates for an existing ORC system. The ORC performance with the pure fluid, which is the media specifically designed for this conversion system, shows good results as a replacement fluid in comparison with the ORC literature. The use of the mixture leads to a 10% increase in the global performance of the installation. Concerning the expansion component, an axial micro-turbine, its performance is only slightly affected by the use of the mixture. These results show that zeotropic mixtures can be used as an adjustment parameter for a given ORC installation and thus allow for the best use of the heat source available to produce electricity.


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