Thermodynamic modelling of single/dual organic fluid Rankine cycle cooling systems: A comparative study

Abstract

This paper presents thermodynamic modelling and a comparative study of single/dual fluid Rankine cycle cooling systems with regenerative heat exchangers in the Rankine Engine (RE)-cycle and the vapour Compression (VC)-cycle subsystems. Both single and dual fluid combinations for the RE-cycle and VC-cycle have been considered and their influence on the RE-cycle efficiency, COP of the VC-cycle and overall system performance have been studied as a function of various component temperatures and the isentropic component efficiencies. In particular, the numerical results for single fluids like R12, R22, R113 and R114 and dual fluids like R113 + R12, R113 + R22, R114 + R12, R114 + R22, R114 + R113 and R113 + R114 are presented and compared with each other. It is found that in general dual fluid systems give better overall system performance as compared to the single fluid systems. Amongst single fluids, R114 and amongst dual fluids R114 + R113 give the best system performance. The presence of RHE in the VC-cycle is more pronounced as compared to that in the RE-cycle in improving the system performance marginally.