Multi-Objective Thermo-Economic Optimization Strategy for ORCs Applied to Subcritical and Transcritical Cycles for Waste Heat Recovery

Abstract

Organic Rankine cycles (ORCs) are an established technology to convert waste heat to electricity. Although several commercial implementations exist, there is still considerable potential for thermo-economic optimization. As such, a novel framework for designing optimized ORC systems is proposed based on a multi-objective optimization scheme in combination with financial appraisal in a post-processing step. The suggested methodology provides the flexibility to quickly assess several economic scenarios and this without the need of knowing the complex design procedure. This novel way of optimizing and interpreting results is applied to a waste heat recovery case. Both the transcritical ORC and subcritical ORC are investigated and compared using the suggested optimization strategy.