Dry hot rock power generation is an important part of geothermal energy
application, and condenser has become an important part of the system
because it can provide a lower outlet back pressure for steam turbine, and
improve the power generation of the system. Engineering Equation Solver is
applied to assess the performance of cooling towers for organic Rankine
cycle power generation systems. In the present study, two models with
different cooling towers are considered: In the first model, the predicted
performance of the opening cooling tower for organic Rankine cycle systems
is studied and compared with the experimental measurement for a 500 kW
system. In the second model, because of the high mass flow of the cooling
water and high energy consumption of the cooling water pump for the opening
cooling tower, the predicted performance of the closed wet cooling tower to
replace the opening cooling tower for organic Rankine cycle systems is
studied. The models are capable of predicting the variation of evaporation
and condensation temperatures, the pressure loss of heat exchangers. R123,
R227ea, R245fa, R600 and R600a are tested as working fluids. The results
show that the second model reduces the energy consumption of the cooling
water pump, and it also improves the net power generation and net
generation efficiency for using R227ea, R600, R600a. However, with the
increase of the closed wet cooling tower pressure loss, both the net power
generation and net generation efficiency decrease. Therefore, different
working fluids are suitable for different pressure loss.