Parametric (exergy-energy) analysis of parabolic trough solar collector-driven combined partial heating supercritical CO <sub>2</sub> cycle and organic Rankine cycle
Yunis Khan, R. S. Mishra
Abstract
Thermodynamic analysis of the combined partial heating supercritical CO2 (PSCO2) cycle and ORC is presented in this study. In engineering equation solver software, a computer program was created for parametric analysis of the model. Basic PSCO2 cycle was then compared with existing previous studies that were conducted without partial heating. It was concluded that the PSCO2 system was 1 to 3% thermally more efficient than the non-partial heating cycle. Furthermore, it was found that ORC’s use in existing PSCO2 cycle improved thermal efficiency by 4.47% of the basic PSCO2 cycle. The effects of the parabolic trough collectors (PTSCs) on the combined cycle performance were further examined. Without taking into account the performance of the PTSCs, the highest exergy and thermal efficiency of the combined cycle using R1233zd(E) was achieved by 83.26 and 48.61%, respectively at 950 W/m2 of solar irradiation while taking into account the performance of PTSCs, the combined cycle achieved exergy efficiency by 42.31% because PTSCs alone accounted for 62.93% of the total exergy destruction. One of the other conclusions obtained from the results was that the highest solar incidence angle was responsible for poor system performance.