R&D PROJECTS

NEXTORC

Acronym: NextORC

Project title: Fundamental studies on Organic Rankine Cycle expanders

Time Period: From May 2017 to April 2020 (extended to April 2021)

Partners:

Total Budget: 

Financing:  EPSRC project number EP/P009131/1

Short description:

The over-arching aim of this project is to improve the understanding of ORC expander design and off-design performance through developing, and validating, suitable tools to accurately predict design point and off-design performance of ORC systems. This will be achieved by targeting research towards five objectives:

  1. Improve the fundamental understanding of design point scaling and off-design performance of supersonic turbines operating with non-ideal gases, and develop improved performance models
  2. Improve the fundamental understanding of the performance of screw expanders during two-phase expansion and to develop improved screw expander performance models
  3. To upgrade an existing experimental test facility to enable the characterisation of loss mechanisms present within ORC expanders and provide validation of performance models and CFD codes
  4. To understand how single and cascaded systems, comprising of both turbine and screw expanders, operate under different heat source conditions and with different working fluids
  5. To identify system configurations that can operate over a range of operating conditions and provide the best compromise between design and off-design performance, and system cost

Website: https://www.city.ac.uk/mathematics-computer-science-engineering/research/thermo-fluids/nextorc