Effect of working fluids on the performance of phase change material storage based direct vapor generation solar organic Rankine cycle system

Abstract

Working fluids can play a critical role in the working of an organic Rankine cycle system. A direct vapor generation solar organic Rankine cycle embedded with phase change material storage is analyzed in this study. The system comprised of an array of evacuated flat plate collectors, phase change material based thermal storage, expander, condenser, and organic working fluid pump. The storage tank model is modeled using a finite difference method in MATLAB programming environment while the 1D model of ORC system is used to evaluate the system performance. After a careful screen, 12 dry and isentropic working fluids were selected and their impact on the performance of the heat storage tank and the overall system is evaluated. The results show that the system efficiencies increase and decrease with the increment and decrement in the critical temperature of the working fluid. Moreover, the rise and fall of working fluid temperature, phase change material temperature, and the quantity of energy stored and released generally increase with an increase in the critical temperature of the working fluid. At the evaporation temperature of 10 °C higher and lower than the melting point temperature of the phase change material, Benzene has achieved the highest system efficiencies of 10.7% & 10.4% during charging and discharging mode, respectively. However, the maximum the rise and fall of working fluid temperature, phase change material temperature, and the quantity of energy stored and released during charging and discharging mode is attained by Heptane which is found to be 5.35 °C & 7.34 °C, 0.48 °C & 0.44 °C and 13.81 MJ & 23.04 MJ, respectively. Heptane has shown overall best performance among the selected working fluids and found to be feasible for phase change material storage based direct vapor generation solar ORC system.