Design and parametric study of an organic Rankine cycle using a scroll expander for engine waste heat recovery

This paper reports the design and investigation of a small scale Organic Rankine cycle using a targeted scroll expander to recover both coolant and exhaust energy from a diesel fuelled internal combustion engine. The designed system could potentially be used to recover both the heat source energy into electricity using simple control of the mass flow rate of the working fluid. Results indicated that under the optimal conditions this ORC system can generate 1 kW power under the full load operational condition of a 6.5 kW engine. Moreover, the corresponding rotation speed of the scroll expander is about 4000 rpm, which means the expander could be adapted with conventional generator to produce electricity at relatively reasonable cost