Thermodynamic Analysis and Optimization of a Solar-Powered Organic Rankine Cycle with Compound Parabolic Collectors
Publication: Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 146, Issue 6
Abstract
The solar-powered Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) could solve the energy crisis and achieve low emissions because it presents a high energy conversion efficiency for a low-temperature heat source, with little impact on the environment. This paper investigates a solar-powered ORC that applies a compound parabolic collector (CPC) and a thermal storage unit for collecting solar radiation and achieving the continuous system operation, respectively. According to the established mathematical model, the effects of thermodynamic parameters on system performance are analyzed. In addition, a multiobjective optimization is performed to find the optimal key parameters and obtaining the optimal system performance from both thermodynamic and economic perspectives by employing nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II). The results reveal that increasing the turbine inlet pressure, thermal oil mass flow of vapor generator, and CPC and decreasing the cooling water temperature could improve system performance. The optimization results show that the optimum solution is obtained with an average net power output of 143.02 kW and a daily average exergy efficiency of 7.75% under the given conditions. The corresponding values of the selected decision variables—turbine inlet pressure, thermal oil mass flow of CPC, thermal oil mass flow of vapor generator, and terminal temperature difference of condenser—are 1,999.611 kPa, , , and 14.02 K, respectively.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appeared in the published article.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFB0603500) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51976147).
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Published In
Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 146 • Issue 6 • December 2020
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 6, 2020
Accepted: Jul 2, 2020
Published online: Sep 16, 2020
Published in print: Dec 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Feb 16, 2021
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