Volume 10: Sustainable Energy Solutions for Changing the World: Part II

Experimental investigation of the pipeline pressure losses effect on ORC system performance Dong Yan, Fubin Yang, Fufang Yang, Hongguang Zhang, Zhiyu Guo

Abstract

Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is an important technology to convert low and medium temperature heat source into work. The irreversible loss results in the fact that the actual performance of the ORC system is much lower than the theoretical value. Pipeline is an indispensable part of the ORC system to connect system components. In this work, the effect of pipeline pressure loss on ORC system power output and thermal efficiency is studied experimentally. The results show that the pressure losses of pipeline reduce the ORC system power output, which is 27.04% lower than the theoretical value under experimental conditions. Pipeline pressure losses also reduce the thermal efficiency of the ORC system, which is 33.04% lower than the theoretical value. Under the same pressure losses, the effect of the pipeline connecting expander and condenser on the ORC system power output and thermal efficiency is about 2.47 times larger than that of the pipeline connecting evaporator and expander.

Keywords organic Rankine cycle, experiment analysis, pipeline pressure losses, system performance