Performance analysis of the partial evaporating organic Rankine cycle (PEORC) using zeotropic mixtures

A new organic Rankine cycle (ORC) architecture: partial evaporating organic Rankine cycle (PEORC) with the zeotropic mixture R245fa/R227ea as working fluid is presented in this paper. The thermodynamic first law analysis as well as the second law analysis were applied to evaluate the system performance. A techno-thermodynamic evaluation on heat exchangers and the expander was also performed in this research. The mass fraction of R227ea (corresponding to zeotropic mixture) and the expander inlet vapor quality (corresponding to PEORC) are chosen as the independent variables. The results showed that both the new cycle architecture: PEORC and zeotropic mixture working fluid can improve the thermodynamic performance and more importantly they can be combined together to further enhance the system. The optimized PEORC with R245fa/R227ea is able to generate about 24.7% more power than the traditional subcritical organic Rankine cycle (SCORC) with R227ea as working fluid. However, the heat exchanger economy may become worse, which should be considered. The results also revealed that the mixture working fluid mainly reduces the exergy loss in the condenser because of the temperature glide characteristic while the PEORC mainly reduces the exergy loss in the evaporator by improving the temperature matching between heat source and working fluid.