Flow field analysis of a turbo expander based on organic Rankine cycle for geothermal power system simulation

Abstract

Abstract Over the years, people paid more attention to using renewable energy such as geothermal energy to decrease the dependency on fossil fuel energy. Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) can generate electricity by using low‐temperature heat sources, and geothermal energy is an ideal pollution‐free heat source that can provide continuous and stable energy. Meanwhile, the turbo expander, one of the essential components in ORC, has the advantages of high speed and single‐stage expansion ratio. In this work, we simulated and analyzed the flow field characteristics of the turbo expander under the assigned working conditions using CFX software. The results showed that the working fluid distributed uniformly in the volute, and there was no apparent whirlpool flow or secondary flow. The pressure near the leading edge of the impeller blade was sparse but became dense at the vicinity of the trailing edge. When the speed of the expander was 15000rad min−1 and the inlet pressure was 0.59 MPa, the isentropic efficiency reached the maximum value, and the change of the inlet temperature had little effect on the isentropic efficiency, which can be ignored in actual operation. The results guide in improving the practical application of geothermal energy.

Keywords

• isentropic efficiency
• low‐temperature geothermal energy
• organic Rankine cycle
• turbo‐expander