OPTIMAL EVAPORATING AND CONDENSING TEMPERATURES OF ORGANIC RANKINE CYCLE IN A HOT AND HUMID ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

This paper presents a thermodynamic analysis of an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) in a hot and humid environment. A theoretical procedure is proposed for the determination of the optimal evaporation temperature (OET) and optimal condensing temperature (OCT) of a subcritical ORC plant, which is based on thermodynamic theory; the heat input is selected as the objective function. The OETs and OCTs of 21 working fluids, which comprise wet, isentropic and dry fluids, are determined under given environmental conditions– hot and humid environment. The Engineering Equation Solver (EES) integrated development environment is used to optimize the heat input of the ORC plant. Results suggest that the wet fluids (namely R717, Methanol and Ethanol) have the potential of producing better thermodynamic figure of merit over the other fluid types.   http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/njt.v36i1.14