Optimization and thermo-economic performance analysis of organic Rankine cycles using mixture working fluids driven by solar energy

ABSTRACT

The current paper communicates the thermodynamic investigation on non-recuperated organic Rankine cycle system employing environmentally friendly mixtures of hexane/pentane, isohexane/pentane, and butane/pentane. Results indicate that thermodynamic performance of a system employing referred mixture is superior, whereas system’s economy is inferior to employing pure working substance. Furthermore, a multi-objective optimization is carried out to obtain optimal system performance. It is observed that the exergetic efficiency and UA_tot value obtained through a number of iterations are 44.79–52.81% and (3.2 −9.12) x 10⁴ W/K, respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic analysis
• exergy
• genetic algorithm
• mass fraction
• zeotropic mixture