Thermodynamic Based Working Fluid Selection for High-Temperature Waste Heat Recovery of a Turbocharged Diesel Engine Using Organic Rankine Cycle

Abstract

A considerable amount of waste heat is produced by internal combustion engines. Bottoming cycle application of Organic Rankine Cycles (ORC) is one of the promising technologies that recuperates the waste heat of engines. A lot of engine waste heat is released into the environment. There are a lot of working fluids that can be applied in these cycles. As the engine waste heat temperature is extremely high, finding a suitable working fluid, which operates properly in the combined cycle, is challenging. In this paper, the thermodynamic analysis of ten working fluids including cyclohexane, HFE7000, HFE7100, n-hexane, n-pentane, R11, R123, R134a, R141b, and R245fa is conducted to observe the influence of different parameters on the system performance and introduce the most appropriate working fluid. Results indicated that, in the studied ranges, R134a had the best performances since (a) its thermal and exergy efficiencies were 17.39 % and 17.34 %, respectively; (b) the thermal efficiency of the engine increased by 9 %, and the net power of the system reached 7.5 kW. Furthermore, there was about 9 % reduction in fuel consumption. On the other hand, among the studied working fluids, cyclohexane operates as the least suitable one by possessing the minimum amounts.