An Effective Method for Working Fluid Design of Organic Rankine Cycle

Abstract

This paper addresses an effective method for the selection and design of optimal working fluids of organic Rankine cycle (ORC) based on quantitative working fluid selection rules, aiming to reduce the complexity and improve the calculation efficiency of the working fluid design model. In the proposed method, the critical properties of the optimal working fluids for the given heat sources are first explored and summarized based on the quantitative relationship obtained by existing research and simulations. Based on the concept of working fluid substitution, the critical properties of the optimal pure working fluid are then adopted to target the optimal mixture working fluid by solving a modified computer-aided molecular-mixture design (CAMD) model and the ratio r of critical pressure to critical temperature is also strictly constrained to ensure a better working fluid. The component and the composition of the mixture working fluid are, thus, determined simultaneously. Results showed that both the designed pure and mixture working fluids have better performance than the existing ones determined by the selection and design rules. The targeted mixture working fluid enables one to achieve at least similar systematic efficiency and a better exergy efficiency in ORC than pure working fluid featuring similar critical properties. The application of the proposed method and model is finally verified via a practical case study.