Performance Comparison of Organic Rankine Cycle and Vapour Compression Cycle Hybrid Cooling-Heating System using Subcritical or Supercritical Working Fluid

Abstract

This paper presents a mathematical modelling on the evaluation of cooling, heating and power performance of a hybrid system of Organic Rankine Cycle and Vapour Compression Cycle. The system is assumed to be powered through solar parabolic trough collector and is able to generate a cooling power of 10 kW. Refrigerants R134a or R245fa are chosen as the working fluid of the system. The system is constructed using commercial energy modelling tool AspenPlus. Analysis is performed to determine the effect of changing the mass flow rate split ratio on the energy output. The effect of using subcritical and supercritical working fluid is also compared. Particular attention is paid toward the condition where the power output is equivalent to the energy consumption in view of creating a self-powered cooling and heating system. The result shows that the coefficient of performance for system using R245fa is higher compared to that using R134a. However, the system using R134a allows a self-powered cooling and heating system to be achieved to be achieve at a much higher mass split ratio, resulting the system to be 35% more efficient in the performance.