Experimental investigation on a small pumpless ORC (organic rankine cycle) system driven by the low temperature heat source

P. Gao, L.W. Wang, R.Z. Wang, L. Jiang and Z.S. Zhou

Energy, 2015, vol. 91, issue C, 324-333

Abstract: A small pumpless ORC (organic rankine cycle) system with different scroll expanders modified from compressors of the automobile air-conditioner is established, and the refrigerant R245fa is chosen as the working fluid. Different hot water temperatures of 80, 85, 90 and 95 °C are employed to drive the pumpless ORC system. Experimental results show that a maximum shaft power of 361.0 W is obtained under the hot water temperature of 95 °C, whereas the average shaft power is 155.8 W. The maximum energy efficiency of 2.3% and the maximum exergy efficiency of 12.8% are obtained at the hot water temperature of 90 °C. Meanwhile a test rig for investigating the mechanical loss of the scroll expander is established. The torque caused by the internal mechanical friction of the expander is about 0.4 N m. Additionally, another scroll expander with a displacement of 86ml/r is also employed to investigate how scroll expander displacement influences the performance of the pumpless ORC system. Finally, the performance of the pumpless ORC system is compared with that of the conventional ORC system, and experimental results show that the small pumpless ORC system has more advantages for the low-grade heat recovery.

Keywords: Pumpless; ORC (organic rankine cycle); Scroll expander; Mechanical loss; Energy efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544215011524
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:91:y:2015:i:c:p:324-333

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2015.08.076

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 ().