A simulation study has been done on Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) with nine different
working fluids in four different types of system configurations. An Organic Rankine Cycle is similar to
Rankine cycle with the exception of using organic fluids for its working fluids. It is widely claimed to
be more effective than steam Rankine cycle in low heat grade applications. The objective of the study
is to study the performance of the system in conjunction with biomass thermal system by selecting the
best working fluid and system configurations. The simulation is done using MATLAB and REFPROP
9.0 respectively. The selection of the best configuration is based on the thermal efficiency of the system.
It is found that toluene is the best option in simple ORC system. In ORC system added with internal
heat exchanger or recuperator, dodecane and propylcyclohexane are the better option compared to
other fluids. All the organic fluids show improvements with addition of recuperator. For temperature
range of 150oC-300oC, it is found that water is not effective compared to organics fluids. Superheating
process shows a slight improvement in a system with recuperator, but no improvement in simple cycle.
The highest thermal efficiency is found in Scenario D. The second best is Scenario C, followed by
Scenario A and the most ineffective is Scenario B. Copyright © 2016 Penerbit Akademia Baru - All
rights reserved.