Waste heat recovery is characterized as an appealing method to enhance overall energy efficiency. Therefore, in this paper, the Vapor Compression Refrigeration (VCR) system employs the diesel engine exhaust-powered Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) to generate the cooling effect. The ORC is further modified in order to generate additional power using solar energy. The source temperatures of diesel engine exhaust and solar heat are taken in the range of 690-810 K and 433-473 K, respectively. The thermodynamic investigation consists of an energy and exergy analysis to determine the effect of turbine inlet temperatures, condenser temperature, and evaporator temperature over the performance parameters of the ORC-VCR system. The study exhibits the coefficient of performance (COP) of the system for the Benzene-R601 refrigerant pair is maximum which is 1.18. The exergetic efficiency for the same refrigerant pair is 18% more as compared to Cyclohexane-R1234yf refrigerant pair. A multi-objective optimization procedure was executed utilizing a genetic algorithm (GA), which suggested that at the temperature of the higher-pressure turbine is 548.33 K and the temperature of the lower-pressure turbine is 439.19 K, which delivered the maximum cooling effect i.e. of 33.72 TR. Moreover, the system exhibits better COP and cooling capacity at lower ambient temperatures.
Read full abstract