Investigation on an innovative cascading cycle for power and refrigeration cogeneration

In order to further realize efficient utilization of low grade heat, an innovative cascading cycle for power and refrigeration cogeneration is proposed. Pumpless Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) acts as the first stage, and the refrigerant R245fa is selected as the working fluid. Sorption refrigeration cycle serves as the second stage in which silica-gel/LiCl composite sorbent is developed for the improved sorption characteristic. The concerning experimental system is established, and different hot water inlet temperatures from 75 °C to 95 °C are adopted to investigate the cogeneration performance. It is indicated that the highest power and refrigeration output are able to reach 232 W and 4.94 kW, respectively under the condition of 95 °C hot water inlet temperature, 25 °C cooling water temperature and 10 °C chilled water outlet temperature. For different working conditions, the total energy and exergy efficiency of the cascading system range from 0.236 to 0.277 and 0.101 to 0.132, respectively. For cascading system the exergy efficiency of heat utilization ranges from 30.1% to 41.8%, which is 144% and 60% higher than that of pumpless ORC and sorption chiller when the hot water inlet temperature is 95 °C.