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Advances in Turbomachinery in Renewable Energy and Waste Heat Recovery
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Advances in Turbomachinery in Renewable Energy and Waste Heat Recovery

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "J: Thermal Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 May 2022) | Viewed by 16078

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Antti Uusitalo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Energy Systems, Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland
Interests: turbine design; micro turbines; organic Rankine cycle (ORC); waste heat recovery; supercritical fluids

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

New power technologies have been constantly developed with the aim to reach energy production sector with efficient use of primary energy sources and having minor impacts to the environment. To reach this goal, different new power plant technologies based on the use of renewable energy sources and recovering waste heat have been intensively investigated in the recent times. In this type of systems, the use of non-conventional working fluids has been often considered, such as the use of organic fluids, different refrigerants, and fluids at supercritical fluid state, such as in the supercritical CO2 power cycle technology.

The aim of this Special Issue is to promote the recent advances and provide insight in the development, design, and operation of turbomachines for renewable energy and waste heat recovery applications. As the turbomachines are one of the key components in power systems, the specific focus of the special issue is on research work done on turbomachines operating with fluids showing fluid dynamic behaviour different of those of ideal gases. The technology field can cover organic Rankine cycles, systems using supercritical fluids as well as other type of renewable energy and waste heat recovery technologies.

The paper submissions for the special issue can cover some of the following aspects but also other submissions related to the topic are welcome:

  • Turbomachinery component design and loss analysis
  • Turbomachinery design with different working fluids
  • Design and off-design analysis of turbomachines
  • Turbomachines operating with supercritical fluids
  • Effect of turbomachinery performance and operation on the efficiency of renewable and waste heat recovery power cycles
  • Real gas compressors
  • Real gas flows and related phenomena inside the turbomachines

Dr. Antti Uusitalo
Guest Editor

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 6701 KiB  
Article
Numerical and Experimental Investigation of a Velocity Compounded Radial Re-Entry Turbine for Small-Scale Waste Heat Recovery
by Andreas P. Weiß, Dominik Stümpfl, Philipp Streit, Patrick Shoemaker and Thomas Hildebrandt
Energies 2022, 15(1), 245; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15010245 - 30 Dec 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2095
Abstract
The energy industry must change dramatically in order to reduce CO2-emissions and to slow down climate change. Germany, for example, decided to shut down all large nuclear (2022) and fossil thermal power plants by 2038. Power generation will then rely on [...] Read more.
The energy industry must change dramatically in order to reduce CO2-emissions and to slow down climate change. Germany, for example, decided to shut down all large nuclear (2022) and fossil thermal power plants by 2038. Power generation will then rely on fluctuating renewables such as wind power and solar. However, thermal power plants will still play a role with respect to waste incineration, biomass, exploitation of geothermal wells, concentrated solar power (CSP), power-to-heat-to-power plants (P2H2P), and of course waste heat recovery (WHR). While the multistage axial turbine has prevailed for the last hundred years in power plants of the several hundred MW class, this architecture is certainly not the appropriate solution for small-scale waste heat recovery below 1 MW or even below 100 kW. Simpler, cost-effective turbo generators are required. Therefore, the authors examine uncommon turbine architectures that are known per se but were abandoned when power plants grew due to their poor efficiency compared to the multistage axial machines. One of these concepts is the so-called Elektra turbine, a velocity compounded radial re-entry turbine. The paper describes the concept of the Elektra turbine in comparison to other turbine concepts, especially other velocity compounded turbines, such as the Curtis type. In the second part, the 1D design and 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) optimization of the 5 kW air turbine demonstrator is explained. Finally, experimentally determined efficiency characteristics of various early versions of the Elektra are presented, compared, and critically discussed regarding the originally defined design approach. The unsteady CFD calculation of the final Elektra version promised 49.4% total-to-static isentropic efficiency, whereas the experiments confirmed 44.5%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Turbomachinery in Renewable Energy and Waste Heat Recovery)
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20 pages, 6861 KiB  
Article
Experimental Characterization of an Adaptive Supersonic Micro Turbine for Waste Heat Recovery Applications
by Tobias Popp, Andreas P. Weiß, Florian Heberle, Julia Winkler, Rüdiger Scharf, Theresa Weith and Dieter Brüggemann
Energies 2022, 15(1), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15010025 - 21 Dec 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3740
Abstract
Micro turbines (<100 kWel) are commercially used as expansion machines in waste heat recovery (WHR) systems such as organic Rankine cycles (ORCs). These highly loaded turbines are generally designed for a specific parameter set, and their isentropic expansion efficiency significantly deteriorates [...] Read more.
Micro turbines (<100 kWel) are commercially used as expansion machines in waste heat recovery (WHR) systems such as organic Rankine cycles (ORCs). These highly loaded turbines are generally designed for a specific parameter set, and their isentropic expansion efficiency significantly deteriorates when the mass flow rate of the WHR system deviates from the design point. However, in numerous industry processes that are potentially interesting for the implementation of a WHR process, the temperature, mass flow rate or both can fluctuate significantly, resulting in fluctuations in the WHR system as well. In such circumstances, the inlet pressure of the ORC turbine, and therefore the reversible cycle efficiency must be significantly reduced during these fluctuations. In this context, the authors developed an adaptive supersonic micro turbine for WHR applications. The variable geometry of the turbine nozzles enables an adjustment of the swallowing capacity in respect of the available mass flow rate in order to keep the upper cycle pressure constant. In this paper, an experimental test series of a WHR ORC test rig equipped with the developed adaptive supersonic micro turbine is analysed. The adaptive turbine is characterized concerning its off-design performance and the results are compared to a reference turbine with fixed geometry. To create a fair data basis for this comparison, a digital twin of the plant based on experimental data was built. In addition to the characterization of the turbine itself, the influence of the improved pressure ratio on the energy conversion chain of the entire ORC is analysed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Turbomachinery in Renewable Energy and Waste Heat Recovery)
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18 pages, 2849 KiB  
Article
Assessment of Organic Rankine Cycle Part-Load Performance as Gas Turbine Bottoming Cycle with Variable Area Nozzle Turbine Technology
by Mohammad Ali Motamed and Lars O. Nord
Energies 2021, 14(23), 7916; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14237916 - 26 Nov 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2377
Abstract
Power cycles on offshore oil and gas installations are expected to operate more at varied load conditions, especially when rapid growth in renewable energies puts them in a load-following operation. Part-load efficiency enhancement is advantageous since heat to power cycles suffer poor efficiency [...] Read more.
Power cycles on offshore oil and gas installations are expected to operate more at varied load conditions, especially when rapid growth in renewable energies puts them in a load-following operation. Part-load efficiency enhancement is advantageous since heat to power cycles suffer poor efficiency at part loads. The overall purpose of this article is to improve part-load efficiency in offshore combined cycles. Here, the organic Rankine bottoming cycle with a control strategy based on variable geometry turbine technology is studied to boost part-load efficiency. The Variable Area Nozzle turbine is selected to control cycle mass flow rate and pressure ratio independently. The design and performance of the proposed working strategy are assessed by an in-house developed tool. With the suggested solution, the part-load organic Rankine cycle efficiency is kept close to design value outperforming the other control strategies with sliding pressure, partial admission turbine, and throttling valve control operation. The combined cycle efficiency showed a clear improvement compared to the other strategies, resulting in 2.5 kilotons of annual carbon dioxide emission reduction per gas turbine unit. Compactness, autonomous operation, and acceptable technology readiness level for variable area nozzle turbines facilitate their application in offshore oil and gas installations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Turbomachinery in Renewable Energy and Waste Heat Recovery)
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27 pages, 6370 KiB  
Article
Turbine Design and Optimization for a Supercritical CO2 Cycle Using a Multifaceted Approach Based on Deep Neural Network
by Muhammad Saeed, Abdallah S. Berrouk, Burhani M. Burhani, Ahmed M. Alatyar and Yasser F. Al Wahedi
Energies 2021, 14(22), 7807; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14227807 - 22 Nov 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3652
Abstract
Turbine as a key power unit is vital to the novel supercritical carbon dioxide cycle (sCO2-BC). At the same time, the turbine design and optimization process for the sCO2-BC is complicated, and its relevant investigations are still absent in [...] Read more.
Turbine as a key power unit is vital to the novel supercritical carbon dioxide cycle (sCO2-BC). At the same time, the turbine design and optimization process for the sCO2-BC is complicated, and its relevant investigations are still absent in the literature due to the behavior of supercritical fluid in the vicinity of the critical point. In this regard, the current study entails a multifaceted approach for designing and optimizing a radial turbine system for an 8 MW sCO2 power cycle. Initially, a base design of the turbine is calculated utilizing an in-house radial turbine design and analysis code (RTDC), where sharp variations in the properties of CO2 are implemented by coupling the code with NIST’s Refprop. Later, 600 variants of the base geometry of the turbine are constructed by changing the selected turbine design geometric parameters, i.e., shroud ratio (rs4r3), hub ratio (rs4r3), speed ratio (νs) and inlet flow angle (α3) and are investigated numerically through 3D-RANS simulations. The generated CFD data is then used to train a deep neural network (DNN). Finally, the trained DNN model is employed as a fitting function in the multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) to explore the optimized design parameters for the turbine’s rotor geometry. Moreover, the off-design performance of the optimized turbine geometry is computed and reported in the current study. Results suggest that the employed multifaceted approach reduces computational time and resources significantly and is required to completely understand the effects of various turbine design parameters on its performance and sizing. It is found that sCO2-turbine performance parameters are most sensitive to the design parameter speed ratio (νs), followed by inlet flow angle (α3), and are least receptive to shroud ratio (rs4r3). The proposed turbine design methodology based on the machine learning algorithm is effective and substantially reduces the computational cost of the design and optimization phase and can be beneficial to achieve realistic and efficient design to the turbine for sCO2-BC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Turbomachinery in Renewable Energy and Waste Heat Recovery)
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18 pages, 4293 KiB  
Article
Analysis of Radial Inflow Turbine Losses Operating with Supercritical Carbon Dioxide
by Antti Uusitalo and Aki Grönman
Energies 2021, 14(12), 3561; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14123561 - 15 Jun 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2636
Abstract
The losses of supercritical CO2 radial turbines with design power scales of about 1 MW were investigated by using computational fluid dynamic simulations. The simulation results were compared with loss predictions from enthalpy loss correlations. The aim of the study was to [...] Read more.
The losses of supercritical CO2 radial turbines with design power scales of about 1 MW were investigated by using computational fluid dynamic simulations. The simulation results were compared with loss predictions from enthalpy loss correlations. The aim of the study was to investigate how the expansion losses are divided between the stator and rotor as well as to compare the loss predictions obtained with the different methods for turbine designs with varying specific speeds. It was observed that a reasonably good agreement between the 1D loss correlations and computational fluid dynamics results can be obtained by using a suitable set of loss correlations. The use of different passage loss models led to high deviations in the predicted rotor losses, especially with turbine designs having the highest or lowest specific speeds. The best agreement in respect to CFD results with the average deviation of less than 10% was found when using the CETI passage loss model. In addition, the other investigated passage loss models provided relatively good agreement for some of the analyzed turbine designs, but the deviations were higher when considering the full specific speed range that was investigated. The stator loss analysis revealed that despite some differences in the predicted losses between the methods, a similar trend in the development of the losses was observed as the turbine specific speed was changed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Turbomachinery in Renewable Energy and Waste Heat Recovery)
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