Analysis of heat transfer and irreversibility of organic rankine cycle evaporator for selecting working fluid and operating conditions

Abstract

Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is suitable to converting the normally hard to utilize low temperature thermal energies, such as geothermal energy, solar energy, and industrial waste heat, to electricity through utilizing low boiling organic working fluids. The performance of ORC system is dramatically affected by the selections of working fluid and working conditions. As a key component of waste heat recovery, the irreversible loss of evaporator also has great influence on the performance of ORC system. In this paper, we study the heat transfer performance in evaporator under the condition that the heat source parameters and pinch point temperature difference are identified. It is found that the heat transfer performance is affected by Cr, the ratio of heat capacity flow rates between the working fluid and the heat source fluid. The equivalent thermal resistance, deducing from the concept of entransy, to measure the irreversability during the heat transfer process is used. Then, the parameter ?r, the ratio between latent heat and sensible heat of working fluid is defined. With the parameters Cr and ?r, we investigate the relationship between the heat transfer and irreversible loss, and deduce the condition that maximum heat transfer and minimum equivalent thermal resistance occurs. Finally, a calculation method is established to choose the optimum working fluid and the evaporation condition.