Preliminary Design and Off-Design Analysis of a Radial Outflow Turbine for Organic Rankine Cycles

Recently, the advantages of radial outflow turbines have been outstanding in various operating conditions of the organic Rankine cycle. However, there are only a few studies of such turbines, and information on the design procedure is insufficient. The main purpose of this study is to provide more detailed information on the design methodology of the turbine. In this paper, a preliminary design program of a radial outflow turbine for organic Rankine cycles was developed. The program determines the main specifications of the turbine through iterative calculations using the enthalpy loss model and deviation angle model. For reliability evaluation of the developed algorithm, a 400.0 kW turbine for R143a was designed. The designed turbine was validated through computational fluid dynamics. As a result, the accuracy of the program was about 95% based on the turbine power, which shows that it is reliable. In addition, the turbine target performance could be achieved by fine-tuning the blade angle of the nozzle exit. In addition, performance evaluation of the turbine against off-design conditions was performed. Ranges of velocity ratio, loading coefficient, and flow coefficient that can expect high efficiency were proposed through the off-design analysis of the turbine.