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Dereje S. Ayou1, Rajagopal Saravanan2, Joan Carles Bruno1 and Alberto Coronas1 *
1
Universitat Rovira i Virgili, CREVER Group of Applied Thermal Engineering, Avda.
Paisos Catalans, 26, 43007 Tarragona, Spain; 2Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Institute for Energy Studies, Anna University, Sardar Patel Road, Guindy, Chennai 600025,
India
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Abstract
Keywords: Kalina power cycle; absorption cycle; combined power and cooling; power/cooling ratio;
effective first law efficiency
*Corresponding author:
alberto.coronas@urv.cat Received 14 January 2013; revised 4 April 2013; accepted 9 April 2013
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solar thermal energy, geothermal heat or waste heat. Other refer- the combination of absorption refrigeration and Kalina power
ences for absorption cycles suitable for simultaneous production cycles. The system operates at two pressure levels, those given by
of power and refrigeration are also available in the literature [6]. the condenser at high pressure and the evaporator at low pres-
Although other types of mixtures (like ammonia/lithium sure. An NH3/H2O mixture, referred as the basic solution
nitrate, ammonia/sodium thiocyanate and organic fluids) can (state 1), is pumped to the system high pressure (state 2) and
be used, NH3/H2O mixture is the commonly used working fluid split into three streams (state 3A, 3B and 3C), which recovers
for combined absorption cycles [6 8]. The main advantage of heat internally before re-mixed (state 7) and enter into the
these non-conventional working fluids in the combined absorp- low-temperature generator (Generator 1). The basic solution is
tion cycles is that they can be used to overcome some of the partially boiled in Generator 1 and separated into liquid (state
drawbacks, such as the costly rectification process, associated 16) and vapour stream (state 9), which is further purified in
with the conventional NH3/H2O working fluid. At the Group of reflux condenser (state 10). The liquid condensate leaving the
Applied Thermal Engineering-CREVER, we have been analysing reflux condenser (state 26) is re-mixed with the basic solution
the thermodynamic performance of the non-conventional leaving Generator 1 (state 8) in the low temperature separator.
working fluids for combined absorption cycles [7]. Then, the liquid solution (state 16) is boiled in the high-
The objective of this paper is to systematically study a modified temperature generator (Generator 2) and separated into vapour
basic NH3/H2O absorption cycle configuration using NH3 as (state 18) and liquid (state 22) streams. The liquid solution is
Figure 1. Modified ammonia/water cycle for combined power and cooling applications.
11 12 13 14 15) after condensing in the condenser is sub- (n) Optimum split ratio is 0.277 (the split ratio is defined as
cooled (state 11 12) in the condensate pre-cooler by heating the the ratio of the mass flow rate of the basic solution to the
vapour leaving the evaporator (state 14 15) and then throttled recovery heat exchanger to the mass flow rate of the basic
(state 12 13) in the expansion valve before it produces the solution from the absorber).
cooling effect in the evaporator (state 13 14). The three streams (o) Reference environment temperature (for exergy calcula-
(state 15, 21 and 24) mix to regenerate the basic solution (state tion) is 293 K.
25), which is cooled in the absorber to state 1, and this com-
pletes the whole cycle process. Steady-state mass and energy balances for the components of
the cycles are established as follows:
Global mass balance:
X X
3 THERMODYNAMIC MODEL m_ in m
_ out 1
The thermodynamic model for the analysis and simulation of
where m
_ denotes the mass flow rate (kg/s); in, inlet; out, outlet
the cycle is established based on simplifying model assumptions,
Mass balance for ammonia:
energy and mass balances for each component in the cycle.
X X
required to produce the same amount of cooling effect by using Table 1. Base-case performance summary for the proposed absorption
a reversible refrigeration cycle. However, in practice, the actual _ 1 1 kg=s basis for
cycle for power and cooling applications (m
(real) power input required to produce the same cooling effect is calculation).
quit high due to the internal and external irreversibilities inher- Useful dual output (kW)
ent in real refrigeration cycle processes. Therefore, in order to Cooling capacity (Q _ eva ) 180.84
weigh the cooling output of the cycle realistically, the exergy Net mechanical power (W _ net ) 22.04
associated with the cooling output must be divided by reason- Thermal power (kW)
Absorber heat duty (Q _ abs ) 451.45
able second law efficiency for a refrigeration cycle, which is
Condenser heat duty (Q_ con ) 181.28
equivalent to dividing the cooling capacity by a practical COP. Low-temperature generator heat input (Q _ gen1 ) 245.24
Accordingly, thermodynamically consistent and realistic energy High-temperature generator heat input (Q _ gen2 ) 216.89
(first law) efficiency is defined as follows. It is referred as effect- Reflux condenser heat duty (Q _ rec ) 171.15
ive first law efficiency by Vijayaraghavan et al. [11]. Recovery heat exchanger heat duty (Q _ rhx ) 48.66
Condensate pre-cooler heat duty (Q_ cpc ) 21.66
Solution heat exchanger heat duty (Q _ shx ) 255.00
W_ net Ex
_ eva =href
hI;eff 5 Superheater heat input (Q _ sh ) 11.80
_Qgen1 Q_ gen2 Q _ sh Total driving heat input (Q _ in ) 473.93
The exergy associated with the cooling (kW), Ex_ eva , is calcu- temperature on the system performance is evaluated for a tem-
lated as the exergy change across the evaporator [12]: perature range between 20 and 408C. The evaporator tempera-
ture is also varied between 210 and 108C. A 1 kg/s of basic
_ eva m
Ex _ 13 h13 h14 T0 s13 s14 6 solution through the pump is taken as a basis for calculation. To
account the quality of the useful outputs of the combined cycle
where T0 is the reference (or dead state) temperature (K); s, spe- (mechanical power and cooling effect), effective first law effi-
cific entropy (kJ/kg K). ciency of the system is calculated at different generator, sink and
Power/cooling ratio, R, is defined as the ratio of the net mech- evaporator temperatures. The assumed reference environment
anical power output of the system per the cooling effect pro- temperature (T0 293 K) was considered.
duced in the evaporator: The influence of generator temperature on the cycle useful
_ net output such as power produced, cooling capacity, overall
W
R 7 thermal efficiency, effective first law efficiency and power/
Q_ eva cooling ratio is shown above in Figures 2 and 3, respectively. The
cycle has an optimum value for the overall thermal efficiency
around the generator temperature of 1308C at the baseline case
(tabs tcon 358C and teva 2108C) considered in the cycle
Figure 5. The effect of DT on (a) cycle useful outputs (mechanical power and
Figure 4. The effect of generator temperature on cycle useful outputs at several cooling) and (b) cycle efficiencies and power/cooling ratio at the base-case
evaporator temperatures: (a) cooling capacity; (b) net power output. condition.