Open Access

ARTICLE

Performance Analysis of an Organic Rankine Cycle with a Preheated Ejector

Kaiyong Hu^1,*, Yumeng Zhang¹, Tianrun Zhang¹, Dequan Zhang^2,*, Zhaoxian Yang³

1 Tianjin Key Lab of Refrigeration Technology, Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin, 300134, China
2 Institute of Food Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, National Risk Assessment Laboratory of Agro-Products Processing Quality and Safety, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Beijing, 100193, China
3 Tianjin Tengsheng Technology Co., Ltd., Tianjin, 300380, China

* Corresponding Authors: Kaiyong Hu. Email: ; Dequan Zhang. Email:

(This article belongs to this Special Issue: Recent Advances in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences)

Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing 2022, 18(4), 1183-1193. https://doi.org/10.32604/fdmp.2022.019787

Received 15 October 2021; Accepted 12 January 2022; Issue published 06 April 2022

Abstract

The so-called organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is an effective technology allowing heat recovery from lower temperature sources. In the present study, to improve its thermal efficiency, a preheated ejector using exhaust steam coming from the expander is integrated in the cycle (EPORC). Considering net power output, pump power, and thermal efficiency, the proposed system is compared with the basic ORC. The influence of the ejector ratio (ER) of the preheated ejector on the system performances is also investigated. Results show that the net power output of the EPORC is higher than that of the basic ORC due to the decreasing pump power. Under given working conditions, the average thermal efficiency of EPORC is 29% higher than that of ORC. The ER has a great impact on the performance of EPORC by adjusting the working fluid fed to the pump, leading to significant variations of the pump work Moreover, the ER has a remarkable effect on the working fluid temperature lift (TL) at the evaporator inlet, thus reducing the evaporator heat load. According to the results, the thermal efficiency of EPORC increases by 30%, when the ER increases from 0.05 to 0.4.

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Keywords

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