The Thermodynamic Performance of Liquid-Vapor Separation Air-Cooled Condenser in ORC System at Low Ambient Temperature

This paper investigated the thermodynamic performance of a novel condenser, liquid-vapor separation condenser (LSC), under the ORC conditions with extreme ambient air temperature. By contrast, a common parallel flow condenser (PFC) with the identical structure of tube and fin, together with the heat transfer area was measured under the same condition. The average condensing temperature was chosen as 35°C, R134a was chosen as the working fluid. The experimental results announced that the in-tube average heat transfer coefficients (AHTCs) of the LSC were 96.7% to 109.1% of the PFC when the initial air temperature varied from −10°C to 10°C, at the R134a inlet mass flux from 437kg/(m²s) to 750kg/(m²s), and heat flux from 3kW/m² to 5 kW/m². Specially, the pressure drop was only 35.1% to 53.2% of the PFC under the experiment conditions. The tube wall temperatures of the LSC decreased slower than the PFC. The thermodynamic performance of the LSC was superior to the PFC under the ORC conditions. The result indicates the LSC is a promising condenser in ORC system.