Thermodynamic analysis of organic Rankine cycle with Hydrofluoroethers as working fluids

Abstract

This paper presents the analysis of organic Rankine cycle (ORC) using hydrofluoroethers (HFEs) such as HFE7000, HFE7100 and HFE7500 as working fluids under external conditions. HFE's has been chosen over chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's) and hydro chlorofluorocarbons (HCFC's) as it is environmentally friendly. Both the CFC's and the HCFC's possess ozone depletion potential (ODP), while the hydrofluorocarbons (HFC's) have relatively significant global warming potential (GWP). The HFE's that have excellent thermophysical properties and low toxicity can be recommended as a long term solution to the environmental issues. The HFE's have zero ODP and very low GWP compared to the CFC's, HCFC's and HFC's. A thermodynamic model has been developed using Engineering Equation Solver (EES) software to simulate the system under steady state conditions. Parametric analysis is conducted to examine the effects of some thermodynamic parameters on the system performance using different working fluids. When turbine inlet temperature was varied from 70°C to 110 °C keeping condensation temperature fixed at 28 °C, HFE7000 produces the maximum thermodynamic efficiency and performs better in view of the net work output under the given working conditions. However, when evaporation pressure was kept constant at 1.2 bar and condensation temperature was varied from 20°C to 30 °C, HFE7500 produced the maximum efficiency of 12.3% in comparison with 7.6% for HFE7100 and 4.1% for HFE7000. The work demonstrates the use of hydrofluoroethers as working fluid in ORC.