Working fluid selection for an Organic Rankine Cycle utilizing high and low temperature energy of an LNG engine

This study proposed a combined Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system utilizing exhaust waste as its heat source and liquid natural gas (LNG) as its heat sink to provide alternative power for an LNG-fired vehicle. This system, consisting of a regenerator and a dual heat source composite heat exchanger, was designed to efficiently recover the engine waste heat (EWH) and to guarantee vaporizing LNG steadily. Five potential applicable organic working fluids are analyzed: C4F10, CF3I, R236EA, R236FA and RC318. Each fluid was analyzed at various evaporation temperatures and condensation temperatures using a thermodynamic model, and a self-made MATLAB program based on the physical properties on REFPROP data was applied to run the simulation. Analytical results showed that fluid R236FA has the highest thermal efficiency ηth of 21.6%, and that of the others are also around 21%. Based on a twelve-cylinder four stroke stationary natural gas engine, the simulated calculations show that the selected five working fluids can improve the fuel economy by more than 14.7% compared to that without ORC.