Advances in Low-Temperature Solar Organic Rankine Cycle System
A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "J: Thermal Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 August 2020) | Viewed by 7107
Special Issue Editor
Interests: low-temperature heat-to-power conversion with ORC; solar sub-critical ORC prototypes (power generation and desalination) design, manufacturing and testing; volumetric expanders and heat exchangers design, manufacturing and testing; super-critical, TransCritical prototypes design manufacturing and testing; trilateral flash cycle
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Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Solar energy is a renewable energy of high importance and a further boost of utilization is crucial towards de-fossilizing the continually increasing energy demand and mitigating global warming. Solar energy is capable to satisfy effectively both electricity and thermal energy needs while a wide range of technologies is available covering different temperature ranges and systems’ sizes, to collect and convert heat to power. The use of low temperature solar heat to power generation is however a challenging and hot research issue, since it incorporates low heat to power conversion efficiency and a questionable cost-effectiveness.
The current state of the art indicates that the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) technology is almost exclusively used to convert low grade solar heat to electricity, due to its higher conversion efficiency and maturity, compared to all alternative technical solutions. However, several promising ideas towards improving further the thermal efficiency are under investigation such as expander liquid-flooding, supercritical operation, new organic fluids or TFC. Thermal efficiency improvement is a key challenge to enhance technical and economic attractiveness of low-grade solar heat-to-power conversion.
This Special Issue aims to further contribute in the efficient conversion of low temperature solar heat to electricity through the well-known technology of ORC. In this context, advances of all relevant technologies, design and control techniques and solutions are in the spotlight of this issue.
Dr. Dimitris S. Manolakos
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- system modelling: simulation/optimisation and design tools
- innovative system architectures
- low temperature solar collectors technologies
- new/novel working fluids: properties, characterization, applications
- expander technologies: turbines, volumetric expanders
- solar ORC variants: trilateral flash cycle (TFC), supercritical ORC (SCORC), transcritical ORC (TCORC), single / two stages ORC
- heat exchangers: evaporators, condensers, recuperators
- interaction with other heat generation/handling sources: biomass, heat pumps, hybrid systems, waste heat recovery
- testing of prototypes: results, assessment, experience gain
- thermal storage
- novel/smart control techniques
- solar ORC applications
- cogeneration, desalination and polygeneration systems
- techno-economic assessment, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
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