Performance analysis of an organic Rankine cycle with internal heat exchanger having zeotropic working fluid

Abstract

© 2015 The Authors. In this study, performance of a 50 kW organic Rankine cycle (ORC) with internal heat exchanger (IHE) having R245fa/R152a zeotropic refrigerant with various compositions was investigated. The IHE could reduce heat rate at the ORC evaporator and better cycle efficiency could be obtained. The zeotropic mixture could reduce the irreversibilities during the heat exchanges at the ORC evaporator and the ORC condenser due to its gliding temperature; thus the cycle working temperatures came closer to the temperatures of the heat source and the heat sink. In this paper, effects of evaporating temperature, mass fraction of R152a and effectiveness of internal heat exchanger on the ORC performances for the first law and the second law of thermodynamics were considered. The simulated results showed that reduction of R245fa composition could reduce the irreversibilities at the evaporator and the condenser. The suitable composition of R245fa was around 80% mass fraction and below this the irreversibilities were nearly steady. Higher evaporating temperature and higher internal heat exchanger effectiveness also increased the first law and second law efficiencies. A set of correlations to estimate the first and the second law efficiencies with the mass fraction of R245fa, the internal heat exchanger effectiveness and the evaporating temperature were also developed.