With the increasing environmental concern on global warming, hydrofluoro-olefin (HFOs), possessing low GWP, has attracted great attention of many researchers recently. In this study, non-azeotropic mixtures composed of HFOs (HFO-1234yf, HFO-1234ze(z), HFO-1234ze(e) and HFO-1234zf) are developed to substitute for HFC-134a and CFC-114 in air-conditioning and high-temperature heat pump systems, respectively. The cycle performances were evaluated by an improved theoretical cy-cle evaluation methodology. The results showed that all the mixtures proposed herein were favorable refrigerants with excel-lent thermodynamic cycle performances. M1A presented lower discharge temperature and pressure ratio and higher COPc than that of HFC-134a. The volumetric cooling capacity was similar to HFC-134a. It can be served as a good environmentally friendly alternative to replace HFC-134a. M3H delivered similar discharge temperature as CFC-114 did. And the COPh was 3% higher. It exhibits excellent cycle performance in high-temperature heat pump and is a promising refrigerant to substitute for CFC-114. And the gliding temperature differences enable them to exhibit better coefficient of performance by matching the sink/source temperature in practice. Because the toxicity, flammability and other properties are not investigated in detail, ex-tensive toxicity and flammability testing needs to be conducted before they are used in a particular application.
ZHANG ShengJun, WANG HuaiXin & GUO Tao Department of Thermal Energy and Refrigeration Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
A novel combined power and heat generation system was investigated in this study. This system consists of a low-temperature geothermally-powered organic Rankine cycle (ORC) subsystem, an intermediate heat exchanger and a commercial R134a-based heat pump subsystem. The advantages of the novel combined power and heat generation system are free of using additional cooling water circling system for the power generation subsystem as well as maximizing the use of thermal energy in the low-temperature geothermal source. The main purpose is to identify suitable working fluids (wet, isentropic and dry flu-ids) which may yield high PPR (the ratio of power produced by the power generation subsystem to power consumed by the heat pump subsystem) value and QQR (the ratio of heat supplied to the user to heat produced by the geothermal source) value. Parameters under investigation were evaporating temperature, PPR value and QQR value. Results indicate that there exits an optimum evaporating temperature to maximize the PPR value and minimize the QQR value at the same time for individual fluid. And dry fluids show higher PPR values but lower QQR values. NH3 and R152a outstand among wet fluids. R134a out-stands among isentropic fluids. R236ea, R245ca, R245fa, R600 and R600a outstand among dry fluids. R236ea shows the highest PPR value among the recommended fluids.
A detailed thermodynamic and techno-economic comparison is presented for a CO2-based transcritical Rankine cycle and a subcritical organic Rankine cycle (ORC) using HFC245fa (1,1,1,3,3-pentafluoro-propane) as the working fluid driven by the low-temperature geothermal source,in order to determine the configuration that presents the maximum net power output with a minimum investment.The evaluations of both Rankine cycles have been performed based on equal thermodynamic mean heat rejection temperature by varying certain system operating parameters to achieve each Rankine cycle's optimum design at various geothermal source temperature levels ranging from 80oC to 120oC.The results obtained show that the optimum ther-modynamic mean heat injection temperatures of both Rankine cycles are distributed in the scope of 55% to 65% of a given geothermal source temperature level,and that the CO2-based transcritical Rankine cycle presents 3% to 7% higher net power output,84% reduction of turbine inlet volume flow rate,47% reduction of expansion ratio and 1.68 times higher total heat transfer capacity compared with the HFC245fa-based subcritical ORC.It is also indicated that using the CO2-based transcritical system can reduce the dimension of turbine design.However,it requires larger heat transfer areas with higher strength heat exchanger materials because of the higher system pressure.
GUO Tao,WANG HuaiXin & ZHANG ShengJun Department of Thermal Energy and Refrigeration Engineering,Tianjin University,Tianjin 300072,China
