Control strategies of pumps in organic Rankine cycle under variable condensing conditions

The working medium pump and cooling water pump are important components in organic Rankine cycle system. However, they have not received as much attention as the expander and working medium. Simultaneously, the dramatic changes in condensing environment deviate the organic Rankine cycle working point from the designed operating conditions. Hence, this paper focused on the performance improvements and control strategies of working medium pump and cooling water pump in small-scale organic Rankine cycle under variable condensing conditions. A model was established to predict the performances of an organic Rankine cycle system with R245fa, especially the pumps in the system, under variable condensing conditions. The results showed that the overall efficiency of multi-stage centrifugal pump was between 14% and 39% at an estimated speed of approximately 1600 RPM to 2328 RPM. In winter conditions, the back work ratio increased from 0.05 to 0.19 with increasing evaporation pressure and decreasing mass flow rate. In other words, it is unnecessary to pursue excessively high evaporation temperature at low rotational speed of multi-stage centrifugal pump. As for the cooling water pump, it is feasible to reduce the power consumption of the cooling system through changing the rotational speed of water pump. The water pump can be operated with high efficiency (between approximately 58.4% and 65.3%, corresponding to an estimated speed range of 1374 RPM to 1813 RPM) when the system run in optimum operating conditions. It is also found that the performance of organic Rankine cycle was strongly influenced by fluctuating ambient temperature, with the net efficiency and net power increase of 3.36 % and 5.11 kW in winter compared to summer.