Thermodynamic and Thermo Economic Analysis of Organic Rankine Cycle with Multi-objective Optimization for Working Fluid Selection with Low- Temperature Waste Sources in the Indian Industry

orc2019 Tracking Number 116

Sustainability and environmental protection have become an important issue in the energy-intensive industry. Driven by this, targets have been set to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels for lowering the carbon dioxide emission and sustainable energy use. In India, availability of low-grade waste heat (less than 400 °C) finds an extensive opportunity in increasing the energy efficiency for the industry. The Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) and Regenerative-ORC are considered to be promising technologies to recover the low-grade industrial waste heat. In this work, fifty-one potential working fluids have been studied for the ORC and RORC system. Non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) was exploited to perform multi-objective optimization of thermodynamic performance and economic analysis of the process using the working fluids. Optimal compromise solutions were selected from Pareto frontiers (as obtained from NSGA-II) using fuzzy set theory for all the fifty-one potential working fluids. Based on the selected optimal solution, the efficiency of the cycle and total plant set-up cost was determined. Propylene was found to perform the best in both the ORC and RORC systems. The result was used to calculate an explicit evaluation index in economic performance (static investment payback period). Furthermore, a fast decision-making method was developed for the optimal selection of the working fluid using key physical parameters of the respective fluids. Reference: 1. Krishna B, Basab S. Utilization of low-grade waste heat-to-energy technologies and policy in Indian industrial sector : a review. Clean Technol Environ Policy 2017;19:327–47. doi:10.1007/s10098-016-1248-2. 2. Saha B K, Chakraborty B, Sam AA, Ghosh P. Performance Analysis of Organic Rankine Cycle Technology to Exploit Low-Grade Waste Heat to Power Generation in Indian Industry 2017; doi:11:1072–8.