scholarly journals Exergy, Economic, and Life-Cycle Assessment of ORC System for Waste Heat Recovery in a Natural Gas Internal Combustion Engine

Resources ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillermo Valencia Ochoa ◽  
Javier Cárdenas Gutierrez ◽  
Jorge Duarte Forero

In this article, an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) was integrated into a 2-MW natural gas engine to evaluate the possibility of generating electricity by recovering the engine’s exhaust heat. The operational and design variables with the greatest influence on the energy, economic, and environmental performance of the system were analyzed. Likewise, the components with greater exergy destruction were identified through the variety of different operating parameters. From the parametric results, it was found that the evaporation pressure has the greatest influence on the destruction of exergy. The highest fraction of exergy was obtained for the Shell and tube heat exchanger (ITC1) with 38% of the total exergy destruction of the system. It was also determined that the high value of the heat transfer area increases its acquisition costs and the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of the thermal system. Therefore, these systems must have a turbine technology with an efficiency not exceeding 90% because, from this value, the LCOE of the system surpasses the LCOE of a gas turbine. Lastly, a life cycle analysis (LCA) was developed on the system operating under the selected organic working fluids. It was found that the component with the greatest environmental impact was the turbine, which reached a maximum value of 3013.65 Pts when the material was aluminum. Acetone was used as the organic working fluid.

Author(s):  
Concepción Paz ◽  
Eduardo Suarez ◽  
Miguel Concheiro ◽  
Antonio Diaz

Waste heat dissipated in the exhaust system in a combustion engine represents a major source of energy to be recovered and converted into useful work. A waste heat recovery system (WHRS) based on an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is a promising approach, and has gained interest in the last few years in an automotive industry interested in reducing fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. Understanding the thermodynamic response of the boiler employed in an ORC plays an important role in steam cycle performance prediction and control system design. The aim of this study is therefore to present a methodology to study these devices by means of pattern recognition with infrared thermography. In addition, the experimental test bench and its operating conditions are described. The methodology proposed identifies the wall coordinates, traces paths, and tracks wall temperature along them in a way that can be exported for subsequent post-processing and analysis. As for the results, through the wall temperature paths on both sides (exhaust gas and working fluid) it was possible to quantitatively estimate the temperature evolution along the boiler and, in particular, the beginning and end of evaporation.


Author(s):  
Quazi E. Hussain ◽  
David R. Brigham

The Rankine cycle is used commercially to generate power in stationary power plants using water as the working fluid. For waste heat recovery applications, where the temperature is lower, water is typically replaced by a carefully selected organic fluid. This work is based on using the waste heat in an automobile to generate electricity using the Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) with R245fa (1, 1, 1, 3, 3 penta-fluoropropane) as the working fluid. The electricity thus generated can be used to drive the accessory load or charge the battery which in any case helps improve the fuel economy. A simple transient numerical model has been developed that is capable of capturing the main effects of this cycle. Results show that exhaust heat alone can generate enough electricity that is capable of bringing about an improvement to the fuel economy under transient drive cycle conditions. Power output during EPA Highway drive cycle is much higher than EPA City due to higher exhaust mass flow rate and temperature. Time needed to reach operating conditions or in other words, the warm-up time plays an important role in the overall drive cycle output. Performance is found to improve significantly when coolant waste heat is used in conjunction with the residual exhaust heat to pre-heat the liquid. A sizing study is also performed to keep the cost, weight, and packaging requirement down without sacrificing too much power. With careful selection of heat exchanger design parameters, it has been demonstrated that the backpressure on the engine can be actually lowered by cooling off the exhaust gas. This lower backpressure will further boost the fuel economy gained by the electricity produced by the Rankine bottoming cycle.


2012 ◽  
Vol 229-231 ◽  
pp. 576-581
Author(s):  
En Hua Wang ◽  
Hong Guang Zhang ◽  
Bo Yuan Fan

The evaporator is a critical component when using organic Rankine cycle (ORC) to recover waste heat from an internal combustion engine. Evaluating the amount of heat quantity that can be transferred in a designed evaporator is very important for a successful ORC system. In this paper, a finned tube evaporator used for recovering the exhaust waste heat of a diesel engine was presented. The mathematical model for the evaporator was set up according to the dimensions of the designed evaporator along with the specified working conditions of ORC. The evaporator performance was analyzed as the matched diesel engine operating at the rated power point. The results indicate that the heat transfer quantity of the designed evaporator can be reached at 76 kW, and the exhaust temperature at the evaporator exit can be reduced to 115°C.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 1680
Author(s):  
Concepción Paz ◽  
Eduardo Suárez ◽  
Miguel Concheiro ◽  
Antonio Diaz

Waste heat dissipated in the exhaust system in a combustion engine represents a major source of energy to be recovered and converted into useful work. A waste heat recovery system (WHRS) based on an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is a promising approach, and it gained interest in the last few years in an automotive industry interested in reducing fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. Understanding the thermodynamic response of the boiler employed in an ORC plays an important role in steam cycle performance prediction and control system design. The aim of this study is, therefore, to present a methodology to study these devices by means of pattern recognition with infrared thermography. In addition, the experimental test bench and its operating conditions are described. The methodology proposed identifies the wall coordinates, traces the paths, and tracks the wall temperature along them in a way that can be exported for subsequent post-processing and analysis. As for the results, through the wall temperature paths on both sides (exhaust gas and working fluid), it was possible to quantitatively estimate the temperature evolution along the boiler and, in particular, the beginning and end of evaporation.


2011 ◽  
Vol 201-203 ◽  
pp. 585-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Guang Zhang ◽  
En Hua Wang ◽  
Ming Gao Ouyang ◽  
Bo Yuan Fan

Energy saving and environment protection are two most important issues that today’s internal combustion engine industry must tackle with. Lots of heat energy waste with the exhaust gas when the engine is running. Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is a good method to recover the waste heat of the engine exhaust. In this paper, the mathematical model of ORC was built up in Matlab and the parameters were optimized using genetic algorithm (GA). Eight pure component organic working fluids were selected and compared. The results indicate that the evaporating pressure of the working fluid and the condensing temperature are two important parameters for ORC; the super heater also can enhance the system thermal efficiency slightly.


Author(s):  
Tao Chen ◽  
Weilin Zhuge ◽  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Yangjun Zhang

The Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is an effective technology to recover the waste heat of the internal combustion engine (ICE) exhaust gas and coolant water. Performance prediction and matching of the expander is a key issue, during designing the ORC system. Radial turbines have the advantage in the ORC system for the ICE waste heat recovery because of its small size and high efficiency compared with volumetric expanders. But the ORC turbines design database is insufficient and the organic gas test rig is difficult to be constructed. As a result, this paper, based on similarity theory, establishes a performance prediction method for fully using the mature design and experimental datum of air turbines. By this prediction method, turbine performance can be obtained when its working fluid is changed from the air to the organic gas. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution has been obtained for a calculation example, and the validity of the turbine performance prediction method is demonstrated by comparing the ORC turbine’s predicted performance with the simulated performance. The results show that almost all of the performance parameter’s predictive deviation is less than 5%. This paper comes to a conclusion that designing an R123 gas turbine is similar with designing an air turbine whose rotation rate is twice that of the former, expansion ratio is twice that of the former, power is four times twice that of the former at the same mass flow rate.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Cabezas ◽  
José Mendoza ◽  
Iván Ponce ◽  
Rafael Cantorin ◽  
Daniel Gonzales ◽  
...  

This work describes the preliminary design of a lab-scale organic Rankine cycle (ORC) for waste heat recovery based applications. As heat source for the ORC, exhaust gases from an actual internal combustion engine are utilized. The design is primarily carried out accounting for the working fluid path. More specifically, a brief introduction to be subject is initially provided. The details of the ORC preliminary design are discussed next. This includes the selection of the main working fluid, the definition of the ORC plant layout and the design of the main ORC plant components. The specifics of an overall control loop resembling an actual control system that could be used in the designed ORC based plant is also provided. In terms of power output, the results show that up to 1.68 kW can be produced from the waste heat of internal combustion engines like the one accounted for in this work. Compared to the shaft power (25.1 kW) associated with the internal combustion engine providing the heat source, this power output represents about 7%. The preliminary design described here constitutes the first step of a large effort aiming to build, install and test a lab-scale ORC for educational purposes. It is expected that such ORC based plant allows carrying out in future several studies, including the development of different control strategies for maximizing the operational performance of these plants.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 024-045
Author(s):  
Iniobong Gregory Frank ◽  
B. Nkoi ◽  
I. E. Douglas

In this research, Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is used to recover heat from exhaust gas of a four-stroke diesel engine. After retrofitting ORC to the engine, Brake power increased from 10473.91 kW to combined – cycle Brake power of 10736.00kW, thermal efficiency increased from 36.01% to combined – cycle thermal efficiency of 51.32% and Exhaust gas temperature decrease from 358oC to 120oC at the exit of the turbocharger. ORC with R12, R22, R134a and R290 as working fluids at saturation and superheated temperatures, pressures and condenser pressures at different ranges were used to compare refrigerants performance in converting low grade exhaust gas waste heat into useful work. This research presents theoretical analysis on four different refrigerants. Applying the above-mentioned refrigerants as working fluid superheated vapour temperature for R12 is 131.72oC, R134a is 129.37oC, R22 is 113.40oC and R290 is 116.95oC. ORC Power generated by turbine gives 94.98kW, 95.56kW. 130.32kW. 262.64kW respectively, ORC Thermal efficiency gives 36%, 29%, 37% and 38% for R12, R22, R134a, and R290 respectively. Combined – cycle power for each of the refrigerant gives 10568.89kW, 10604.23kW, 10569.47kW and 10736.00kW respectively, combined – cycle thermal efficiency for each refrigerant gives 51.14%, 51.18%, 51.14% and 51.32% for R12, R134a, R22 and R290 respectively. R290 offers optimal performance compared to other refrigerants used in this research. The retrofitting of the ORC has saved some supposedly waste exhaust heat energy and has increased both combined cycle power output and thermal efficiency of the engine cycle.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1984
Author(s):  
Ramin Moradi ◽  
Emanuele Habib ◽  
Enrico Bocci ◽  
Luca Cioccolanti

Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) systems are some of the most suitable technologies to produce electricity from low-temperature waste heat. In this study, a non-regenerative, micro-scale ORC system was tested in off-design conditions using R134a as the working fluid. The experimental data were then used to tune the semi-empirical models of the main components of the system. Eventually, the models were used in a component-oriented system solver to map the system electric performance at varying operating conditions. The analysis highlighted the non-negligible impact of the plunger pump on the system performance Indeed, the experimental results showed that the low pump efficiency in the investigated operating range can lead to negative net electric power in some working conditions. For most data points, the expander and the pump isentropic efficiencies are found in the approximate ranges of 35% to 55% and 17% to 34%, respectively. Furthermore, the maximum net electric power was about 200 W with a net electric efficiency of about 1.2%, thus also stressing the importance of a proper selection of the pump for waste heat recovery applications.


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