Design and Fabrication of Solar Organic Rankine Cycle Test Rig with Helical Coil Heat Exchangers and Working Fluid Selection Strategy

Abstract

Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is a modified Rankine cycle which uses organic working fluid to convert heat into useful energy. ORC has proven its potential in the field of exploiting waste heat generated by process industries. Due to environmental concerns and power demand, researchers now started exploiting renewable energy sources like solar and geothermal energies as heat source for ORC. The research in the field of ORC has revealed that, the energy conversion efficiency of ORC is very low and depends on working fluids used in it. Although variety of organic working fluids are available in market, the Zeotropic working fluids have revealed the better performance in ORC systems due to their temperature glide characteristics in evaporator and condenser but the unknown thermophysical characteristics of these working fluids restricts their use in ORC. This motivates a researcher to explore new possibilities to use these working fluids and improve ORC efficiency. In this regard a systematic test setup is designed and developed to test the potential of Zeotropic working fluids with solar energy as heat source.