Investigating the performance and cost effects of nanorefrigerants in a low-temperature ORC unit for waste heat recovery

George Kosmadakis and Panagiotis Neofytou

Energy, 2020, vol. 204, issue C

Abstract: The use of nanorefrigerants in refrigeration and heat pump units increases the cycle performance, with similar effects also applied in organic Rankine cycle (ORC) units, but with very few relevant studies. For this purpose, an existing thermodynamic model for the ORC simulation is extended to account for adding Al2O3 and Cu nanoparticles (NPs) in the refrigerant, introducing their effect in the energy balance and the heat transfer and pressure drop at the different parts of the cycle. Numerical analysis of an ORC with refrigerants R245fa and R1234ze(Z) has been then conducted, with a heat source in the range of 80–120 °C and a NP mass fraction of 0–10% wt., aiming at identifying the performance improvement. The results show that the ORC efficiency increases for higher NP mass fraction and especially with Al2O3. This is mostly attributed to the expansion process with the NPs acting as internal heat sources to the vapour organic fluid, whereas the heat transfer and pressure drop improvements are minor. Finally, the preliminary cost analysis showed that the use of NPs in an ORC brings a payback period of 11.7 years with Al2O3, but with high uncertainty as revealed by the sensitivity analysis.

Keywords: Organic rankine cycle; Nanorefrigerant; Low-temperature heat; Pressure drop; Heat transfer; Payback period (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544220310732
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:204:y:2020:i:c:s0360544220310732

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2020.117966

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().