Exergy and economic assessments of an organic rankine cycle module designed for heat recovery in commercial truck engines

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate the energy and exergy performances of a designed ORC system and to quantify loses within the system and measure its output.The study also assesses the economic performance of the ORC system to determine the feasibility of the business. Methods: Thermodynamic analysis assessing the energy performance and cost estimation using manufacturers’ prices to generate generic equations for estimating costs of the components of the designed ORC system. Findings: The results of the exergy evaluation of the ORC show a system thermal efficiency of 6.39%, net power output of 3.10kWe, exergy destruction of 9.07kW, and exergy efficiency of 54.6%. The economic estimation has a capital investment cost of £8,381.98, a specific investment cost of £2,754.36/kWe, annual savings of £1,233.34, and a payback period of 6.8years. Novelty: The use of exergetic method of analysis and the assessment of the potential economic benefits of installing the module in commercial trucks which form part of the acceptance-criteria, using prevailing market prices of the ORC system is an obvious novelty in this study. In addition, the generation and use of curve-fitting plots to obtain the generic equations for computing the approximate costs of the individual components of the system is an integral part of the novelty of this work.