Applied Thermal Engineering 90 (2015) 579e589

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Research paper

Working uid selection for an Organic Rankine Cycle utilizing high

and low temperature energy of an LNG engine
Sinian He a, Huawei Chang a, *, Xiaoqing Zhang a, Shuiming Shu a, Chen Duan b
a
b

School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Wuhan Second Ship Design and Research Institute, Wuhan 430064, China

h i g h l i g h t s

We design an ORC utilizing LNG cold energy and engine waste heat.

Five working uids are examined at various working conditions.

The maximum thermal efcient of our proposed cycle can reach 20.3%e21.6%.

This system can decrease the brake specic fuel consumption by more than 14.7%.

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 22 January 2015
Accepted 19 July 2015
Available online 28 July 2015

This study proposed a combined Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system utilizing exhaust waste as its heat
source and liquid natural gas (LNG) as its heat sink to provide alternative power for an LNG-red vehicle.
This system, consisting of a regenerator and a dual heat source composite heat exchanger, was designed
to efciently recover the engine waste heat (EWH) and to guarantee vaporizing LNG steadily. Five potential applicable organic working uids are analyzed: C4F10, CF3I, R236EA, R236FA and RC318. Each
uid was analyzed at various evaporation temperatures and condensation temperatures using a thermodynamic model, and a self-made MATLAB program based on the physical properties on REFPROP data
was applied to run the simulation. Analytical results showed that uid R236FA has the highest thermal
efciency hth of 21.6%, and that of the others are also around 21%. Based on a twelve-cylinder four stroke
stationary natural gas engine, the simulated calculations show that the selected ve working uids can
improve the fuel economy by more than 14.7% compared to that without ORC.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
LNG engine
Organic Rankine Cycle
Engine waste heat
Cold energy
Working uid

1. Introduction
In 2013, Chinese consumers bought more than 20 million vehicles; this stirs the growing concern of air pollution in major
Chinese cities. R. Zhang's report [1] showed that trafc has an
annual mean contribution of 16% to PM2.5 particle pollution, in
which exhaust gas contributes 3% to PM2.5 directly, and 13% to
PM2.5 indirectly through secondary inorganic aerosol. To address
the growing consumption of vehicles and reduce air pollution
sources, LNG-red vehicles provide as a practical solution. Natural
gas used as vehicle fuel has many incomparable advantages to fossil
fuels. An LNG engine produces 92% less particulate matter, 80% less
nitrogen oxides (NOx), and almost 100% less sulfur dioxide [2], and
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 86 27 87542718.
E-mail address: changhuawei@hust.edu.cn (H. Chang).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2015.07.039
1359-4311/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

its carbon emission is 29% less [3]. Due to its performance, LNG
vehicles are gaining more attention with sales continuously
growing at the average annual rate of 20% in China. With the
increasing popularity of LNG vehicles, there are two main issues to
address: First, the thermal efciency of the advanced internal
combustion engine is only about 20%e45%, and the majority of the
heat is released through the exhaust and the cooling system into
the atmosphere. Second, as the general LNG vaporizer uses air as
heat source, the low temperature of LNG can cause severe frost
formed on the surface of the heat exchanger, create instability of
the vaporization rate and vibrate the supply of natural gas.
As one of the promising technologies for recovering low-grade
heat energy, Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is generally used to
convert engine waste heat (EWH) of Internal Combustion Engines
(ICEs) into useful work [4]. Charles Sprouse III et al. [5] reviewed
many works dealing with ORC system for EWH recovery with ICEs

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S. He et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 90 (2015) 579e589

and concluded a potential fuel economy improvement around 10%

for ICE with advanced ORC technology.
Using water and ethanol as the working uids for two basic
congurations (exhaust gas only and exhaust gas plus coolant) of
an EWH recovery cycle, Ringler et al. [6] found that the waste heat
in the high-speed cruising condition can produce an addition of
about 10% to the power output at typical highway cruising speed.
Vaja and Gambarotta [7] analyzed three different ORC coupling
modes with different pure working uids to match a stationary ICE.
A 12% increment in the total efciency was achieved by considering
the exhaust and cooling water as thermal source for the ORC system. Based on a hybrid vehicle (spark ignition engine and electric
motor), Diego et al. [8] presented three ORC systems used to
recover heat from the exhaust, in which the waste heat was
transferred into electric power. This study was implemented to
transfer waste heat into electric power. Teng et al. [9] studied EWH
recovery Rankine Cycles for heavy-duty diesel engines. Using a
supercritical reciprocating Rankine engine, inorganic and organic
uids for both pure uids and binary-mixture uids were discussed
in their research. The discussion claimed that up to 20% of waste
heat from the heavy-duty diesel engine can be recovered. E.H.
Wang et al. [10] and H.G. Zhang [11] done a lot of work about
recovering the waste heat from both the exhaust and coolant systems. Combining a gasoline engine and a diesel engine with a dual
loop ORC respectively, the combined engine-ORC systems were
evaluated across the engines entire operating region which is
based on measured data. The evaluations showed that with the
combined system in both the gasoline engine and the diesel engine,
the relative output power improved from 14% to 16% in the peak
effective thermal efciency region. Recently, Marco Sofato [12]
investigated ORC technology to recovery the heat available from
three of the four engines of a real electrically driven LNG carrier.
After comparing three layouts of the engine cooling systems, results showed that the maximum net output of the two-stage ORC
conguration almost doubled the simple and regenerative ones.
There are only a few works concerning about ORC combining
natural gas engines [13e17]. K. K. Srinivasan et al. [13] examined
the EWH recovery potential from an advanced Low Pilot Ignited
Natural Gas (ALPING) low temperature combustion using a bottoming ORC. This examination quantied the potential improvements in fuel conversion efciency (FCE) and brake specic
emissions (NOx and CO2) with hot exhaust gas recirculation (EGR)
addition and waste heat recovery using ORC turbocompounding.
Their another related work estimated that ORCeturbocompounding results in FCE improvements of 10% while maintaining the
essential low NOx characteristics of ALPING combustion [14]. B. Yao
[16]designed a dual loop Organic Rankine Cycle system for waste
heat recovery of a heavy-duty compressed natural gas (CNG) engine, in which cycle R245fa was used as the working uid. Together
with B. Yao, S. Song et al. [17] designed a set of ORC systems with
internal heat exchanger to recover exhaust energy of a stationary
compressed natural gas engine. Under various operating conditions
of engine, the ORC can increase the electric efciency by 6.0% while
reduce the BSFC by 5.0% at most.
Not only the waste heat, but also the cold energy of LNG can be
recovered for electric generation by various schemes. A. Franco and
C. Casarosa [18] proposed and analyzed two direct expansion
schemes which could approach the production of more than 160 kJ
for each kilogram of owing LNG. Y. Song et al. [19] applied the cold
heat rejection to an LNG vaporization system as heat sink of a
transcritical CO2 power cycle driven by solar energy. Many works
also utilized ORC to recover the cold energy [20,21]. X. Shi and D.
Che [22] proposed a combined cycle consisting of an ammoniaewater mixture Rankine cycle and an LNG power generation cycle.
Their modelling results showed that the proposed combined cycle's

net electrical efciency and exergy efciency were 33% and 48%,
respectively. More recently, W. Rao et al. [23] proposed a comparative analysis about a combined cycle utilizing LNG and low temperature solar energy. Their work concluded that the most
appropriate organic working uids were R143a, propane and propylene. K. H. Kim and K. C. Kim proposed an ammoniaewater
combined Rankine cycle power system using low-quality heat and
LNG cold energy [24], their simulation indicated that the ammonia
mass fraction had the largest effect on the system performance. U.
Lee and C. Han [25] proposed a 90MWe combined Rankine cycle
utilizing LNG cold energy and waste heat from the conventional
steam cycle. The combined ORC can produce more than twice as
much power as the conventional steam cycle.
Through investigation, it is found that a lot of methods can
effectively recover the waste heat of ICE and cold energy of LNG, but
there is no available literatures focusing on both waste heat and
cold energy recovery with ORC for LNG-red vehicles. This paper
puts forward a composited system combining LNG engine EWH
recovery and LNG vaporization with ORC, which is a step ahead in
improving the thermal efciency for LNG-red vehicles. The ORC
uses the LNG vehicle exhaust gas as the heat source and both air
and LNG itself as the heat sink. The condenser of the ORC is also
employed to vaporize LNG, thus the condensing temperature of the
ORC is lowered by LNG inversely. The vaporized LNG is inhaled into
the engine and burnt with air, then transformed into exhaust gas
and exhaled out. The present work zeros in on selecting a suitable
working uid for this ORC. Under comprehensive analysis with
various conditions and restrictions, ve basic working uids are
chosen and simulated with mathematical models.
2. Cycle description
Fig. 1 shows that this vehicle EWH recovery thermodynamic
cycle system includes three parts: an ORC section, a LNG vaporization section and a EWH recovery section.
In the ORC section the working uid is compressed through the
high-pressure pump from the liquid saturation point (state 1) to a
sub-cooled liquid state (state 2), then the ow is heated by the
reux working uid inside the regenerator and by the exhaust gas
inside the evaporator, and as a consequence, the ow becomes a
saturated or superheated gas (state 3). Then mechanical energy is
obtained due to the expander, meanwhile, both the pressure and
the temperature of the working uid are decreased (state 4). After
heat exchange in the heat regenerator, the ow is cooled through
the condenser with LNG and air. In the LNG vaporization and the
EWH recovery section, LNG is pumped out from the tank rst (from
state n1 to state n2), after being heated by the organic working uid
in the composite condenser, LNG is vaporized into natural gas (state
n3), which will enter the engine. Before entering the engine, natural gas is controlled to keep the stability of its temperature and
ow rate. Having little inuence on the thermodynamic parameters
of the cycles, these devices are omitted here. After mixing and
combusting with air in the engine, the gases turn into exhaust
(state n4) with a high temperature. Finally, the waste heat is
recovered in the evaporator where the exhaust is cooled down
(state n5) and vented directly to the atmosphere. In the EWH recovery section, the exhaust, whose mass ow rate equals to the sum
of the mass ow rate of LNG and the corresponding mass ow rate
of air, will go through the turbine exhaust to power the air pressurization rst, and then provide high-temperature energy to the
ORC working uid through the evaporator. After pressure expansion and heat release, the energy of the exhaust can be recovered as
much as possible.
In addition, as the cold energy of LNG cannot meet the need of
the designed ORC (this assumption will be proven and discussed by

S. He et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 90 (2015) 579e589

the simulation results at the discussion part), air is introduced to

cool the working uid together with LNG in the dual heat source
composite heat exchanger (condenser/vaporizer) and the
condensing temperature of working uid is set higher than the
ambient temperature. This condenser is a nned tube heat
exchanger, in which working uid and LNG are arranged to ow in
the tubes and air across the tube bundles. As the construction of the
condenser/vaporizer has little inuence on the working uid selection and it is supposed to be designed with the determined
working uids, more details of the construction will be discussed in
the future.
Fig. 2 is the T-S diagram of the ORC in which the state points
correspond with Fig. 1. From point 1 to point 2, the organic working
uid is pumped and 1~2s is the corresponding isentropic
compression process. Then the working uid is heated isobarically
in the regenerator and evaporator which is process 2e3. Point 3 and
point 4 represent the states of working uid at the inlet and outlet
of the expander, respectively. 4~4s is the isentropic expansion
process. Finally, the working uid is cooled through the regenerator
and the composite heat exchanger. While establishing the thermodynamic model of the ORC, the pressure and heat loss in the
pipes are neglected and the loss of a pump and the expander are
taken into consideration.

581

Fig. 2. T-S diagram of ORCs.

2.1. Calculation modeling

2.1.1. The processes of the ORC section
The ORC begins from the compression of the pump and changes
working uid conditions from 1, the saturated liquid state point, to
point 2. The required input power of the pump is listed as follows:

.
Wp mf h2  h1 mf h2s  h1 hp

(1)

in which process 1~2s represents isentropic compression. In the

next process, the working uid is heated to state point 3 with hightemperature and high-pressure through the regenerator and the
evaporator. The total absorbed heat can be divided into two parts:
heat in the regenerator Q22a and heat in the evaporator Q2a3.
Thermal energy absorbed by the working uid in this process is
denoted as:

Q23 Q22a Q2a3 mf h3  h2a mf h2a  h2

mf h3  h2

(2)

The work generated by turbine 1 is:

Wt1 ms h3  h4 mf h3  h4s ht1

(3)

in which process 3~4s is isentropic expansion and ht1 is the thermal

efciency of turbine 1. This cycle ends with a state of saturated
liquid in point 1. The heat rejection from the condenser and
regenerator is characterized by:

Q 4a1 mf h1  h4a

(4)

The expanding pressure ratio is computed by:

p P3 =P4

(5)

The volume ow rate at the inlet and outlet of the turbine 1 are
computed respectively by:

Fig. 1. Schematic of the combined ORC system.

.
V3 mf r3

(6)

.
V4 mf r4

(7)

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S. He et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 90 (2015) 579e589

2.1.2. The LNG vaporization section

In the LNG vaporization section, LNG is taken out of a storage tank
and vaporized in the vaporizer (condenser). Though LNG is drawn by
a cryogenic pump or through a self-pressurization system, this
process is omitted for its limited inuence on the increment of the
enthalpy of LNG. The heat ux absorbed by LNG is determined by:

Q n2n3 mLNG hn3  hn2

(8)

hLNG, which means the radio of heat absorbed by LNG to heat

released by working uid, follows equation below:
hvap

con

Q n2n3 =Q 4a1

(16)

According to the above formulas and the following basic assumptions and conditions, all condition parameters in the system
can be determined.
2.2. The basic parameters

2.1.3. The EWH recovery section

The exhaust gas, generated from the combustion of air and natural
gas, consists of a large amount of carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrogen and leftover oxygen. The exhaust is cooled in the evaporator.
Without considering the heat leakage, the heat transfer is denoted as:

Qe me he1  he2 Q2a3 mf h3  h2a

(9)

in which, the mass ow rate of exhaust me mCO2 mH2 O mN2

mO2 can be calculated according to the combustion reaction equation CH4 2O2/CO2 2H2O. Assuming sufcient combustion of
LNG the following equation is depicted as:

1mLNG  18:2mair /2:75mCO2  2:25mH2 O  13:97mN2  0:23mO2

(10)
which means a unit mass of LNG requires 18.2 units of air mass, and
the exhaust emission are comprised of 2.75 units of carbon dioxide
mass, 2.25 units of water vapor mass, 13.97 units of nitrogen mass,
and 0.23 units of remaining oxygen mass.
2.1.4. Efciency
The system thermal efciency of the ORC is computed by:



hth Wnet =Q e WT1  Wp Q e

(11)

Exergy efciency of the total system is computed by:

hex Wnet =ELNG Ee

(12)

wherein, ELNG and Ee are the maximum available exergy of LNG and
exhaust separately, and they can be obtained from the following
equations:

ELNG mLNG fTamb sn0  hn1  hn0  hn1 g

(13)

Ee me fhe1  he0  Tamb se1  sn0 g

(14)

hORC, which is used to assess the contribution of the ORC power

output to LNG vehicle engine system, is dened as:

hORC Wnet =Wen

(15)

The following assumptions and conditions are based on a

twelve-cylinder four stroke stationary natural gas engine [17].
These assumptions also refer to Ref. [17] except what is
specied.
(1) LNG is simplied as pure methane stored at a state of pressure of 0.101 MPa and temperature of 111.6 K in the tank;
(2) The LNG consumption of the engine mLNG is 127 kg/h and the
output power Wen is 631 kW when the torque is 4000 Nm
around;
(3) The condensing temperature T1 of working uid is set between 290 K and 330 K;
(4) T3 is set between 450 K and 600 K;
(5) The efciency of the high pressure pump is xed to 0.80 [26];
(6) The expander adiabatic isentropic efciency is xed to 0.8
and the expanding pressure ratio is limited to 10 [27];
(7) The initial temperature of exhaust gas entering the evaporator is 610 K and the temperature of the exhaust discharged
from the evaporator is limited to 393 K or higher, according
to the acid dew point [28];
(8) The temperature difference of regenerator is assumed to be
5 K and the heat transfer efciency 0.85;
(9) The maximum and minimum pressures in the ORC system
are set to 2 MPa [29] and 0.1 MPa respectively;
(10) The ambient temperature is xed to 288 K.
To select an appropriate working uid to achieve the maximum
thermal efciency and exergy efciency in various working conditions, a preliminary selection was conducted to estimate the
thermal efciency of all working uids in the Refprop 9.0 database.
In addition, material compatibility, ammability, toxicity Ozone
depletion potential and other properties also need to be considered when selecting working uids. After the preliminary selection, ve working uidsdC4F10, CF3I, R236EA, R236FA and
RC318d are chosen for analysis because of their relatively high
thermal efciencies and vast working regions. Their basic physical
parameters are shown in Table 1. The critical temperatures of all
the selected uids are below T3, except that of CF3I, which is in the
range of T3.
The ORC is tested with the thermodynamic parameters of the
working uids operated in various conditions on a MATLAB simulation through a COM interface function using the built-in data of
REFPROP 9.0, which is developed by the National Institute of

Table 1
The basic properties of the selected working uids.
Substance

Boiling point Tb/K

Critical temperature Tcr/K

Critical pressure Pcr/kPa

GWPa

ODPb

Flammable

C4F10
CF3I
R236EA
R236FA
RC318

271
251
279
272
267

386
296
412
398
388

2323
3950
3500
3196
2757

3.3
5
710
6300
10,300

0
0
0
0
0

No
No
No
No
No

a
b

Global Warming Potential (100 years).

Ozone Depletion Potential.

S. He et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 90 (2015) 579e589

Fig. 3. Contour maps and surface map of the system thermal efciency for the ve working uids.

Fig. 4. Contour maps and surface map of the expansion pressure ratio for the ve working uids.

583

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S. He et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 90 (2015) 579e589

Standards and Technology of the United States. The simulation

process starts with inputting T3 and estimating the status of point 3
(Shown in Fig. 2). If T3 is higher than the saturation temperature
corresponding to 2 MPa, point 3 is superheated and set as
P3 2 MPa; otherwise, point 3 is at the saturated liquid point and is
naturally determined by P3 < 2 MPa. The states of point 1, 2, 4 are
calculated according to the given condensing temperature T1.
Finally, the appropriate operating ranges of every working uid are
screened according to the limitative conditions mentioned above
and the corresponding thermodynamic parameters, such as the
thermal efciency.
3. Result and discussion
The thermodynamic parameters of the ORC for the ve working
uids are plotted as contour maps and surface maps in Figs. 3e10.
One of the most important criterions to evaluate the ORC performance is the thermal efciency hth. Comparisons between the
thermal efciency levels of the different working uids are shown
in the surface map in Fig. 3. As T1 decreases and T3 increases, the
thermal efciency of C4F10, CF3I, R236EA, R236FA and RC318 range
from 7.8% to 21.6%. Among these uids, R236FA, surpasses the
others overall with the highest thermal efciency and C4F10, CF3I,
R236EA and RC318 rank from second to fth, respectively. The
surface map is projected onto ve top-view contour maps to exhibit
the impact of T1 and T3 on every working uid. The owing surface
maps all follow the same approach. The contour maps show the
thermal efciency levels of the selected ve working uids, from
which it can be found that the feasible working regions are all
limited to rectangles, while R236EA's feasible region is limited by

isotherms of 298 K. C4F10, CF3I, R236FA and RC318 are only limited
by the given T1 and T3. In their own operation regions the thermal
efciency levels of the ve working uids increases as T1 decreases
and/or T3 increases. Their highest thermal efciency become 20.4%,
20.9%, 21.3%, 21.6% and 20.3% in the order of C4F10, CF3I, R236EA,
R236FA and RC318. After analyzing the gradient of the contours, we
can nd that the slope along the isotherms of T1 to the peak point of
the thermal efciency is signicantly steeper than that along the
isotherms of T3, which means the impact of T1 to the thermal ef   
  vh 
th 
 th 
ciency is much larger than that of T3, i.e. vh
vT1  >  vT3 . Taking R236FA
as an example, its thermal efciency increases by 0.066 (from 0.150
to 0.216) as T1 decreases from 320 K to 290 K when T3 is xed to
600 K. On the contrary, its thermal efciency increases by only
0.038 (from 0.178 to 0.216) as T3 increases from 450 K to 600 K
when T1 is xed to 290 K. Therefore, the reduction of T1 improves
the thermal efciency of the ORC more signicantly than T3 does.
Thus, the use of LNG as an auxiliary cold source for the ORC plays an
important role.
Expansion pressure ratios, directly determining the material
and structure requirements of the system, are shown in Fig. 4. It can
be seen from the surface gure that the pressure ratios of the ve
working uids vary between 1.8 and 10. Under the same conditions
the pressure ratio of CF3I is the minimum and RC318, R236FA,
C4F10, and R236EA run second to fth in turn. Re-analysis on the
contours shows that the pressure ratios increase only when T1
decreases, and it is independent of T3. According to Table 2, listing
the corresponding saturation temperatures of every working uids
under 2 MPa, it shows that the saturation pressures under the
temperature of T3, which are set to 450 Ke600 K, all exceed 2 MPa,

Fig. 5. Contour maps and surface map of the mass ow rate for the ve working uids.

S. He et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 90 (2015) 579e589

meaning that P3 is xed to 2 MPa on the basic of assumption (9).

Therefore the pressure ratio is dependent on P1 and T1. When T1 is
lower than 298 K, the pressure ratio of R236EA is 10, which is
limited by the maximum pressure ratio, resulting in its smaller
working region shown in the contour. The other maximum pressure ratios are 10.0, 5.1, 10.0 and 8.4 for C4F10, CF3I, R236FA and
RC318, respectively.
The mass ows of the ORC working uids are shown in Fig. 5.
Among these uids, CF3I surpasses the others overall, followed by
C4F10, RC318, R236FA and R236EA. The highest mass ow rate of
each following working uid is 1.79 kg/s, 1.59 kg/s, 1.43 kg/s,
1.04 kg/s and 0.93 kg/s, respectively. The contours show that the
mass ow decreases as T1 decreases and T3 increases.
Fig. 6 shows the volume ow at the inlet of the expander V3.
Comparing Figs. 5 and 6, it can be found that V3 is relevant to mass
ow. It is noteworthy that the maximum values of V3 for the ve
working uids distributes along the boundaries of feasible regions,
rather than appearing on the vertices of the rectangles. The
maximum value of V3 for every working uid, C4F10, CF3I, R236EA,
R236FA and RC318, is 0.0107 m3/s, 0.0194 m3/s, 0.0113 m3/s,
0.0124 m3/s and 0.0122 m3/s, respectively.
Fig. 7 shows the outlet volumetric ow of working uid at the
outlet of the expander V4, which determines the size of the
expander. It can be seen from the contour maps that V4 increases
rapidly with the decrement of T1. This is because that T1, the saturation temperature, directly determines the pressure of the state of
point 4. The maximum value of C4F10, CF3I, R236EA, R236FA and
RC318 is 0.0883 m3/s, 0.0686 m3/s, 0.0915 m3/s, 0.0959 m3/s, and
0.0827 m3/s, respectively.

585

Fig. 8 shows that the exergy efciency of the ORC hex and exergy
efciency of the ve working uids distributes between 1.43% and
4.65%, which is relatively small. In order to avoid the condensation
of water vapor, the exhaust is discharged at a temperature higher
than the boiling point of water, as it is the major source of exergy
destruction. From the contour maps, R236FA and R236EA take the
rst and second place of exergy efciency. As T3 increases, the
thermal efciency increase and mass ow rate decreases, the
exergy efciency shift up and down. The maximum exergy efciency of C4F10, CF3I, R236EA, R236FA and RC318, are 4.09%, 4.64%,
4.45%, 4.65% and 4.25%.
hORC, which assesses the contribution of the Rankine cycle power output to the LNG vehicle engine system, has the denitely
same distribution as the exergy efciency. As can be seen from the
contour maps in Fig. 9, the ranges of every working uids are listed
here as follows: C4F10 is between 1.73% and 4.93%, CF3I is between
2.08% and 5.59%, R236EA is between 2.99% and 5.36%, R236FA is
between 2.36% and 5.60%, and RC318 is between 1.84% and 5.12%.
Thus, the ORC system can make the power output of the engine
power system up to 5% more than that of the natural gas engine
without the ORC.
Fig. 10 illustrates the variation trend of hgas_con, the ratio between heat absorbed by LNG in vaporizer and heat released by
working uid in condenser. It can be veried from the contour
maps that hgas_con varies around 0.3 at most part of the working
region and the highest value of hgas_con is no more than 0.65.
Thus, the heat released by the working uid in the condenser can
ensure the vaporization of LNG. In the view of energy conservation law, additional air should be introduced to take away of

Fig. 6. Contour maps and surface map of system the volumetric ow rate V3 for the ve working uids.

Fig. 7. Contour maps and surface map of system the volumetric ow rate V4 for the ve working uids.

Fig. 8. Contour maps and surface map of the system exergy efciency for the ve working uids.

S. He et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 90 (2015) 579e589

the redundant heat from the working uid. To realize this ORC
condenser/LNG vaporizer, a careful design would be provided in
the future.
The evaluation indexes mentioned above are the only ones for
assessing the performance of ORC when the engine works in the
designed mode. To evaluate the process units performance in offdesign/part-load mode, the brake specic fuel consumption
(BSFC) is introduced as:

BSFC

mLNG
Wnet Wen

(17)

where, Wnet is zero when ORC is not combined with the engine
system. mLNG and Wen varies as the engine load increases as illustrated in Figs. 3 and 6 of Ref. [17]. For comparing the results with the
published work, the data of inlet exhaust temperature Te_in and
exhaust mass ow rate me shown in Figs. 4 and 5 of Ref. [17] are also
adopted. T1 is xed to 293 K and T3 is calculated by:

T3 Tein  Teout =lnTein =Teout

587

BSFCs are 184 g/(kWh), 175 g/(kWh), 156 g/(kWh), 157 g/

(kWh), 155 g/(kWh) and 156 g/(kWh) for pure engine, combined with ORC using R416A, C4F10, CF3I, R236FA and RC318,
respectively. Thus the selected ve working uids can improve the
fuel economy by more than 14.7%.
The best working uid for the ORC is estimated by having its hth,
hex and hORC as large as possible, and by having its p, V3, V4 and BSFC
as small as possible. From the perspective of thermal efciency,
R236FA and R236EA, nonammable, non-ODP halohydrocarbons
with ordinary GWP, are the optimal choice, though the advantages
to others are not signicant. However, R236EA is limited in a small
work region. RC318, another halogenated hydrocarbon refrigerant,
contains no chlorine atoms and no ODP, which makes it an ideal
organic working uid, except for its high GWP value. C4F10 and
CF3I have the lowest V3 and V4 respectively. CF3I also has a smallest
pressure ratio p. As can be seen from the above conclusions, none of
the organic working uids are perfect for all working conditions.
However, from the purpose of this study, R236FA may be the best
choice for this combined system.

(18)

where the outlet exhaust temperature of the evaporator is set to

378 K. Other assumptions are kept unchanged. Fig. 11 shows the
BSFC of combined system. It can be found that all BSFCs decrease
when the engine torque increases. For every xed engine torque,
BSFCs of systems combined with ORC using the ve selected
working uids are lower than that of the engine system using
R416A, which is lower than the engine system without ORC. Among
the ve working uids, R236EA gets the minimum BSFC which is
153 g/(kWh) at the highest engine torque when the minimum

4. Conclusions
An Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) using the waste heat and
exhaust gas of a Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) engine is analyzed. A
MATLAB simulation and REFPROP data are utilized to verify the
feasibility of the designed cycle, and some appropriate candidates
are selected for further study. The ORC simulation operates at
different condensation temperatures T1 (290 Ke330 K) and
different evaporating temperatures T3 (450 Ke600 K) for the ve

Fig. 9. Contour maps and surface map of hORC for the ve working uids.

588

S. He et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 90 (2015) 579e589

Fig. 10. Contour maps and surface map of hgas_con for the ve working uids.

selected organic working uids with different performance. The

simulation results show that almost all of the ve working uids
can work effectively in the given operation conditions, as well as
the following:
(1) Almost all of the working uids can run in all given operation
regions, except the feasible region of R236EA, which is
limited by the expansion ratio exceeding 10 when the
condensation temperature T1 is less than 298 K;
(2) R236FA and R236EA have the highest thermal efciency hth,
which can reach as high as 21.6%, and the highest thermal
efciency of other three working uids are also around 21%;
(3) The ORC can improve the output power by 5% to the selected
LNG engine system;
(4) The selected ve working uids can improve the fuel economy by more than 14.7%.

Table 2
The corresponding saturation temperature under 2 MPa.
Working uids

Temperature/K

C4F10
CF3I
R236EA
R236FA
RC318

378.7
358.5
384.8
374.6
371.9

Fig. 11. BSFC of the system without ORC, combined with ORC when the evaporation
pressure is 2.0 MPa for R416A [17] and combined with ORC for the selected ve
working uids.

Nomenclature
E
h

exergy, kJ/(kg-K)
specic enthalpy, J/kg

S. He et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 90 (2015) 579e589

m
N
P
Q
s
T
V
W

mass ow rate, kg/s

engine speed, r/min
pressure, bar
heat transfer rate, W
specic entropy, kJ/(kg-K)
temperature, K
volume ow rate, m3/s
power, W

Greek symbols
p
pressure ratio
h
efciency
r
density, kg/m3
Subscript
1e4, 2a, 4a, 2s, 4s state points in ORC section
n1en3, e1, e2 state points in LNG and exhaust sections
amb
ambient
e
exhaust
en
engine
vap_con vaporizer to condenser
ex
exergy
f
working uid
p
pump
t1
turbine
th
thermal
Acronyms
ALPING advanced Low Pilot Ignited Natural Gas
BSFC
brake specic fuel consumption
CNG
compressed natural gas
EGR
exhaust gas recirculation
EWH
engine waste heat
FCE
fuel conversion efciency
GWP
global warming potential (relative to CO2)
ICE
internal combustion engine
LNG
liquid natural gas
NOx
oxides and nitrogen
ODP
ozone depletion potential (relative to R11)
ORC
Organic Rankine Cycle
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2015.07.039.
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