Study on Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) for Maximum Power Extraction from Low-Temperature Energy Source

ORC(organic Rankine cycle) has potential of reducing consumption of fossil fuels and has many favorable characteristics to exploit low-temperature heat sources. This work analyzes performance of ORC with superheating using low-temperature energy sources in the form of sensible energy. Maximum mass flow rate of a working fluid relative to that of a source fluid is considerd to extract maximum power from the sources. Working fluids of R134a, $iC_4H_{10}$ and $C_6C_6$, and source temperatures of $120^{\circ}C$, $200^{\circ}C$ and $300^{\circ}C$ are considered in this work. Results show that for a fixed source temperature thermal efficiency increases with evaporating temperaure, however net work per unit mass of source fluid has a maximum with respect to the evaporating temperature in the range of low source temperature. Results also show that the maximum power extraction is possible with R134a for the source temperature of $120^{\circ}C$, with $iC_4H_{10}$ for $200^{\circ}C$, and with $C_6C_6$ for $300^{\circ}C$.

저온 열원으로부터 최대 동력을 생산하기 위한 유기랭킨사이클(ORC)에 관한 연구