Solar-driven Joule cycle reciprocating Ericsson engines for small scale applications. From improper operation to high performance

The paper focuses on a Joule cycle reciprocating Ericsson engine (JCREE) coupled with a solar parabolic trough collector (PTC). A small scale application located at mid Northern Hemisphere latitude (44°25″N) is considered. A new dynamic (time-dependent) model is developed and used to design the geometry and estimate the performance of the PTC-JCREE system under the most favorable weather conditions (i.e. summer day and clear sky). The paper brings two main contributions. First, specific constraints on the design parameters have been identified in order to avoid improper JCREE operation, such as gas under-compression in the compressor cylinder and gas over-compression and/or over-expansion in the expander cylinder. Second, increasing the work generated per day requires using a proper strategy to switch between different rotation speeds. Specific results are as follows. For the (reference) constant engine rotation speed 480 rpm, the output work per day is 39,270 kJ and the overall efficiency is 0.134. The output work decreases by increasing the rotation speed, since the operation interval during a day diminishes. A better operation strategy is to switch among three rotation speed values, namely 480, 540 and 600 rpm. In this case the output work is 40,322 kJ and the overall efficiency is 0.137. The performance improvement is quite small and the reference constant rotation speed 480 rpm may be a suitable choice, easier to use in practice. For both the constant and variable rotation speed strategies, the overall efficiency is almost constant along the effective operation time interval, which is from 8:46 to 15:15.