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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Sustainable Energy Systems
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2024.1474714
This article is part of the Research Topic Low to medium-grade thermal energy utilization in renewable energies and industries View all 3 articles

Thermodynamic analysis of a cascade organic Rankine cycle power generation system driven by hybrid geothermal energy and liquefied natural gas

Provisionally accepted
Zilin Pan Zilin Pan 1Yufei Fu Yufei Fu 2Hongwei Chen Hongwei Chen 2Yangfan Song Yangfan Song 2*
  • 1 Zhanjiang Electric Power Co., Ltd, Zhanjiang, China
  • 2 North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The combination of renewable energy and liquefied natural gas (LNG) cold energy can effectively improve energy utilization efficiency and achieve the goal of energy conservation and emission reduction, which is one of the important directions of future development. This work proposed a cascade organic Rankine cycle (ORC) driven by a geothermal heat source and an LNG heat sink.Seven organic fluids are chosen as candidates to form different working fluid pairs. The effects of the main design parameters on system performance are carried out through the thermodynamic analysis. Then, the optimal design conditions and fluid selection schemes are searched based on the single-objective optimization results. Finally, the exergy destruction study is conducted under the optimal design conditions and working fluid pair. Results showed that the cascade ORC system using the working fluid pair of R601/R290 had the highest exergy efficiency, which could reach 20.02%. At the same time, under the optimal design conditions, the secondary cycle condenser and LNG direct expansion brought high exergy destruction, which was respectively 29.3% and 25.8%, and followed by the two turbines in the cascade ORC system, which were 16.1%, 11.2% and 7.7%.

    Keywords: Hybrid geothermal energy, Liquefied natural gas, Power generation, Cascade organic Rankine cycle, thermodynamic analysis

    Received: 02 Aug 2024; Accepted: 13 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Pan, Fu, Chen and Song. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Yangfan Song, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China

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