Abstract
Micro (0.5–10 kW) organic Rankine cycle (ORC) power systems are nowadays considered for domestic power generation. Selection of a suitable expander is one of the most important problems connected with the domestic ORC system design. Volumetric machines or micro-turbines can be adopted as an expander in domestic ORC systems. Scroll and screw expanders are a common choice and were successfully applied in different small- and micro-power applications. However, micro-turbines as well as scroll and screw expanders are mechanically complicated and expensive. An alternative are rotary-vane machines, which are simple and cheap compared to micro-turbines. This paper documents a study providing the experimental and numerical analyses on the rotary vane expander operating conditions in a micro-ORC system. A test-stand was designed and set up and a series of experiments was performed using the test-stand. Results of these experiments were further used as an input to numerical simulations of an expander operation. In order to simulate the expander operating conditions, a three-dimensional numerical model has been prepared. The analysis presented in this paper indicates that a properly designed multi-vane expander is a cheap and mechanically simple alternative to other expansion devices proposed for domestic ORC systems.
Highlights
The rapidly-growing electricity consumption is one of the most important present-day problems [1]
This paper presents a study providing the experimental and numerical analyses on the rotary vane vane expander operating conditions in a micro‐organic Rankine cycle (ORC) system
Such systems are promising for expander operating conditions in a micro-ORC system
Summary
The rapidly-growing electricity consumption is one of the most important present-day problems [1]. Available domestic power systems (featuring power up to 10 kWe ) include wood chips boilers, photovoltaic cells, solar collectors, heat pumps, wind turbines, fuel cells, and heat storage systems. Their design and working principles are different and were comprehensively described in [5,6,7,8]. In some papers [20,21], the numerical analysis of multi-vane expanders applied in ORC systems was presented These analyses were dedicated only to modelling without experimental validation. The following aspects are treated in the subsequent sections: the experimental test-stand, the numerical model description, and the results of experiments and numerical simulations
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