Thermal Analysis of Organic Rankine Cycle Using Different Organic Fluids

Abstract

A thermodynamic analysis based on first law of thermodynamics of organic Rankine cycle (ORC) was presented to find out effect of organic fluid selection on the cycle efficiency and power output.Different configurations of ORCs with and without Internal Heat Exchanger (IHE) were used. The criteria for choosing the optimum working fluid were discussed and many different organic fluids were compared in terms of thermal efficiency and power output. The results showed that higher efficiencies were obtained for ORCs with IHE configuration, and the organic fluid R123 had the most favorable performance for which the thermal efficiency of ORC was 14.2 and 13.28 with and without IHE, respectively. Moreover, the work output of ORC cycle was about 50 kJ/kg which was the highest when using R123 as an organic fluid.