Experimentally Identifying the Influences of Key Parameters for an Organic Rankine Cycle Using R123

Abstract

As an efficient energy conversion technology, the organic Rankine cycle (ORC) has been widely applied in medium- and low-grade heat sources. In order to explore the experimental performance of ORC and reveal the effects of operation parameters, an experimental setup was built and R123 was selected as the working fluid. In the experiments, the heat source temperature as well as the mass flow rates of the working fluid and cooling water were controlled. Under the design conditions, the net work and cycle efficiency can, respectively, reach up to 0.55 kW and 8.7%. As for the influences of key parameters, with the increase in heat source temperature from 130 °C to 160 °C, the involved heat has a small increase, while the net work increases from 0.44 kW to 0.55 kW, and the cycle efficiency greatly increases from 6.71% to 8.72% at a mass flow rate of working fluid 25 g/s. As for the mass flow rate of cooling water, it has a similar impact on the cycle performances. The difference is that the effect of the cooling water rate is relatively smaller. At the mass flow rate 25 g/s, when the cooling water rate increases from 0.68 kg/s to 0.83 kg/s, the net work varies from 0.46 kW to 0.55 kW, the cycle efficiency increases in the range 7.41~9.4%. Furthermore, except cycle efficiency, all performances are proportional to the mass flow rate of working fluid. In the test range, the difference of cycle efficiency among different mass flow rates is less than 0.7%.