• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.10-17
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• 2013

The organic Rankine cycle has been widely used to convert the renewable energy such as the solar energy, the geothermal energy, or the waste energy etc., to the electric power. Some previous studies focused to find what kind of refrigerant would be a best working fluid for the organic Rankine cycle. In this study, R245fa was chosen to the working fluid, and the cycle analysis was conducted for the output power of 30kW or less. In addition, properties (temperature, pressure, entropy, and enthalpy etc.) of the working fluid on the cycle were predicted when the turbine output power was controlled by adjusting the mass flowrate. The configuration of the turbine was a radial-type and the supersonic nozzles were applied as the stator. So, the turbine was operated in partial admission. The turbine efficiency and the optimum velocity ratio were considered in the cycle analysis for the low partial admission rate. The computed results show that the system efficiency is affected by the partial admission rate more than the temperature of the evaporator.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.34-42
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• 2016

The organic Rankine cycle (ORC) has been used to convert thermal energy to mechanical energy or electricity. The available thermal energy could be waste heat, solar energy, geothermal energy, and so on. However, these kinds of thermal energies cannot be provided continuously. Hence, the ORC can be operated at the off-design point. In this case, the performance of the ORC could be worse because the components of the ORC system designed based on a design point can be mismatched with the output power obtained at the off-design point. In order to improve the performance at the off-design point, a few components were replaced including generator, bearing, load bank, shaft, pump and so on. Experiments were performed on the same facility without including other losses in the experiment. The experimental results were compared with the results obtained with the previous model, and they showed that the system efficiency of the ORC was greatly affected by the losses occurred on the components.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.33-41
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• 2015

Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) has been used to generate electrical or mechanical power from low-grade thermal energy. Usually, this thermal energy is not supplied continuously at the constant thermal energy level. In order to optimally utilize fluctuating thermal energy, an axial-type turbine was applied to the expander of ORC and two supersonic nozzle were used to control the mass flow rate. Experiment was conducted with various turbine inlet temperatures (TIT) with the partial admission rate of 16.7 %. The tip diameter of rotor was to be 80 mm. In the cycle analysis, the output power of ORC was predicted with considering the load dissipating the output power produced from the ORC as well as the turbine efficiency. The predicted results showed the same trend as the experimental results, and the experimental results showed that the system efficiency of 2 % was obtained at the TIT of $100^{\circ}C$.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.5-12
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• 2014

Organic Rankine Cycle is widely used to convert the low-grade thermal energy to the electrical energy. However, usually available thermal energy is not supplied constantly. This makes hard to use positive displacement expanders. Hence, turbo-expander has merits to apply as an expander in ORC because it can operate well off-design points even though the mass flowrate is fluctuated. The thermal energy fluctuation causes the turbo-expander to operate in partial admission. In addition, supersonic nozzles are required so that the partially admitted turbine operates efficiently. In this study, R245fa was chosen as a working fluid of ORC. A design method and an analysis technique of supersonic nozzle based on R245fa were developed. The shape of the nozzle was designed by the characteristic method. The thermal properties within the nozzle were estimated and the predicted results were agreed well with the computed results.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.6-19
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• 2014

Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) has been widely used to convert renewable energy such as solar energy, geothermal energy, or waste energy etc., to electric power. For a small scale output power less than 10 kW, turbo-expander is not widely used than positive displacement expander. However, the turbo-expander has merits that it can operate well at off-design points. Usually, the available thermal energy for a small scale ORC is not supplied continuously. So, the mass flowrate should be adjusted in the expander to maintain the cycle. In this study, nozzles was adopted as stator to control the mass flowrate, and radial-type turbine was used as expander. The turbine operated at partial admission. R245fa was adopted as working fluid, and supersonic nozzle was designed to get the supersonic flow at the nozzle exit. When the inlet operating condition of the working fluid was varied corresponding to the fluctuation of the available thermal energy, optimal operating condition was investigated at off-design due to the variation of mass flowrate.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.12-21
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• 2014

An organic Rankine cycle was analyzed to work at the optimal operating point when the heat source is fluctuated. R245fa was adopted as a working fluid, and an axial-type turbine as expander on the cycle was designed to convert the heat energy to the electricity since the turbo-type expander works at off-design points better than the positive displacement-type expander. A supersonic nozzle was designed to increase the spouting velocity because a higher spouting velocity can produce more output power. They were designed by the method of characteristics for the operating fluid of R245fa. Three different cases, such as various spouting velocities, various inlet total temperatures, and various nozzle numbers, were studied. From these results, an optimal operating cycle can be designed with the organic Rankine cycle when the available heat source as renewable energy is low-grade temperature and fluctuated.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.699-705
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• 2011

A combined heat and power cogeneration system driven by low-temperature sources is investigated by the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The system consists of Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) and an additional process heater as a series circuit. Seven working fluids of R152a, propane, isobutane, butane, R11, R123, isopentane and n-pentane are considered in this work. Maximum mass flow rate of a working fluid relative to that of the source fluid is considered to extract maximum power from the source. Results indicate that the second-law efficiency can be significantly increased due to the combined heat and power generation. Furthermore, higher source temperature and lower turbine inlet pressure lead to lower second-law efficiency of ORC system but higher that of combined system. Results also show that the optimum working fluid varies with the source temperature.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.234-241
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• 2020

This paper presents a thermodynamic performance analysis of a combined cycle consisting of regenerative organic Rankine cycle (ORC) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) Rankine cycle to recover low-grade heat source and the cold energy of LNG. The mathematical models are developed and the system performances are analyzed in the aspect of thermodynamics. The effects of the turbine inlet pressure and the working fluid on the system performance such as the mass flow rates, heat transfers at heat exchangers, power productions at turbines, and thermal efficiency are systematically investigated. The results show that the thermodynamic performance of ORC such as net power production and thermal efficiency can be significantly improved by the regenerative ORC and the LNG cold energy.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.595-602
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• 2012

In this study, for the purpose of reduction of $CO_2$ gas emission and to increase recovery of waste heat from ships, the ORC (Organic Rankine Cycle) is investigated and offered for the conversion of temperature heat to electricity from waste heat energy from ships. Simulation was performed with waste heat from the exhaust gasse which is relatively high temperature and cooling sea water which is relatively low temperature from ships. Various fluid is used for simulation of the ORC system with variable temperature and flow condition and efficiency of system and output power is compared. Finally, 2,400kW output power is obtained by system optimization of the preheater and reheater utilizing waste heat form sea water cooling system.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.53-60
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• 2011

In this study, an organic Rankine-cycle system using HFC-134a, which is a power cycle corresponding to a low-temperature heat source, such as that for geothermal power generation, was investigated from the view point of power optimization. In contrast to conventional approaches, the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of the working fluid within the heat exchangers were taken into account by using a discretized heat exchanger model. The inlet flow rates and temperatures of both the heat source and the heat sink were fixed. The total heat transfer area was fixed, whereas the heat-exchanger areas of the evaporator and the condenser were allocated to maximize the power output. The power was optimized on the basis of three design parameters. The optimal combination of parameters that can maximize power output was determined on the basis of the results of the study. The results also indicate that the evaporation process has to be optimized to increase the power output.