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Applied Thermal Engineering 29 (2009) 2289–2296

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Applied Thermal Engineering

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

Experimental investigation on the internal working process

of a CO2 rotary vane expander
B. Yang a, X. Peng a,b,*, Z. He a, B. Guo a, Z. Xing a
a
School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
b
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents the experimental investigation on the internal working process especially the inter-
Received 15 October 2007 nal leakage of a rotary vane expander prototype, which was developed to replace the throttling valve to
Accepted 17 November 2008 improve the Coefficient of Performance (COP) of the transcritical CO2 refrigeration cycle. The pressure
Available online 24 December 2008
diagram as a function of the rotation angle (p–h diagram) was recorded by two pressure sensors arranged
within the expansion chamber, based on which the features of the working process were analyzed and
Keywords: effects of the some improvement measures on the internal leakage were discussed. Compared with the
Rotary vane expander
ideal p–h diagram, the recorded diagrams presented more rapid decrease in the pressure during expan-
Transcritical CO2 cycle
Working process
sion process, which was attributed to serious leakage within the expander. Further analysis of the
Leakage recorded p–h diagrams showed that three adjacent vanes instead of two formed an integrated working
chamber, which implied that the in-between vane did not contact the cylinder wall at all, and this guess
was proved by the high speed video recording of the running rotor together with the vanes during oper-
ation of the expander in CO2 system. By arranging springs in the vane slots, tight contact between the
vanes and the cylinder wall was ensured and hereby the working process was improved. The gap
between the suction and discharge ports was another important leakage path and installation of a seal
there could increase the pressure difference through the expander by 1.5–2.5 MPa by decreasing the leak-
age directly from the high-pressure suction chamber to the low-pressure discharge chamber. Perfor-
mance test of the modified expander prototype with springs in the slots and seal at the seal arc
showed that the volumetric efficiency increased from 17% to 30% and the isentropic efficiency from 9%
to 23% at the speed of 800 rpm.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The use of CO2 as a refrigerant has received much attention dur-
ing the last decade, owing to its environmentally benign feature.
The low critical temperature, lower than the heat rejection temper-
ature of air-conditioning and heat pump systems, makes the refrig-
eration cycle run in transcritical mode [1]. The relatively low
coefficient of performance (COP) associated with the transcritical
cycle restricts its wide application of CO2 system in most of refrig-
eration and air-conditioning fields, mainly due to the large throt-
tling losses through the throttling valve. Several measures have
been suggested to improve the COP of the transcritical CO2 cycle,
such as adopting the two-stage compression with inter-cooling,
introducing an internal heat exchanger, recovering the expansion
work in the throttling process, and so on. Among these measures,
* Corresponding author. Address: School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an
Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China.
E-mail address: xypeng@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (X. Peng).
replacing the throttling valve with an expander for work recovery
is considered to be the most beneficial one. Theoretical analyses
have concluded that the use of an expander with 60% isentropic
efficiency in the transcritical CO2 system can increase the system
COP by 35% [2], and some expander concepts have been investi-
gated for this purpose. Huff and Radermacher [3] investigated a
scroll expander in a CO2 air-conditioning system, in which the ex-
pander was modified from a scroll compressor for R134a refriger-
ation system. The volumetric efficiency was predicted to be 68% at
2200 rpm and the isentropic efficiency 42% at 1800 rpm. Similar
work was conducted by Fukuta et al. [4] and the measured volu-
metric efficiency was reported to reach 80% and the isentropic effi-
ciency 55%. Baek et al. designed a piston–cylinder expansion device
for work recovery, which increased the system COP by 10% [5].
Since 1994 the development of a novel free piston expander has
been conducted in TU Dresden and the third generation free piston
expander concept characteristic of three-stage expansion was put
forward by Nickl et al. in 2003 [6]. The expander prototype had
been integrated into the CO2 system [7]. A rolling piston expander
developed by Zha et al. was reported to have an isentropic

1359-4311/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2008.11.023
 Author's personal copy
2290 B. Yang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 29 (2009) 2289–2296
Nomenclature
Variables
m_ mass flow rate (kg/h)
h specific enthalpy (kJ/kg)
q density (kg/m3)
p pressure (Pa)
T temperature (K)
g efficiency
n rotational speed (rpm)
Ve suction volume (m3)
nv number of vane
efficiency of about 50% [8]. The swing expander was investigated
by Guan et al. and its efficiency obtained from test data was be-
tween 28% and 44% [9]. Yang et al. proposed a novel two-cylinder
rolling piston expander concept, which does not need an inlet
valve [10]. Zhang et al. developed a double acting free piston ex-
pander, and the experimental studies by means of p-V diagrams
showed that the isentropic efficiency could reach 62% [11].
Compared with other expander concepts, the rotary vane ex-
pander has simpler structure, easier manufacturing and lower cost.
Fukuta et al. have ever investigated this kind of expander both the-
oretically and experimentally, and the analytical results showed
that the leakage in the expander had a dominant influence on
the performance [12]. Unfortunately, neither have experimental
data been provided to support this conclusion, nor the leakage
causes have been analyzed in detail. Badr et al. [13] established a
mathematical model to investigate the vane dynamics and friction
losses by analyzing the forces acting on the vane. They reported
that the loss of contact between the vane tip and the cylinder wall
exists at the early stages of the charging process and throughout
the spread angle of the sealing arc of the cylinder wall. And the rea-
son for this was attributed to the inadequate pressure underneath
the vanes. In another paper of them [14], an audible sound named
‘vane chatter’ was reported to happen when the vane hit the cylin-
der wall and excessive internal leakages from the tips of the vanes
were suggested. Toji et al. [15] studied the strike process between
the vane and the cylinder wall of a rotary vane compressor, and
they concluded that the vane after leaving the cylinder wall moved
towards the bottom of the vane slot and then rebound back by hit-
ting the rotor. But they stated that the phenomenon only took
place at the minimum extension point named ‘sealing arc’ of the
expander.
In the previous work carried out by the authors [16], serious
leakage within the expander was concluded from the low volumet-
ric efficiency of less than 17%, and further analysis of the leakage
distribution made our efforts be focused on the leakage through
two leakage paths, i.e., the gap between the vane tip and the cylin-
der wall and the gap at the seal arc between the inlet port and out-
let port. In order to improve the seal through both gaps, springs
were arranged in the vane slot to ensure a tight contact between
the vane and the cylinder wall, and a seal vane was installed at
the seal arc to block the leakage flow from the inlet port to the out-
let port. Accordingly, comparative studies of the working process
especially the internal leakage of the expander in different cases
were experimentally conducted, mainly by analyzing the p–h dia-
grams and high speed video of vane movement. Preliminary test
of the performance of the modified expander demonstrated an in-
crease in volumetric efficiency from 17% to 30% and isentropic effi-
ciency from 9% to 23% at the speed of 800 rpm. Further
improvement measures on the expander are in progress, e.g., by
reducing the gap clearance between the rotor and end cover from
present 0.03 mm to optimal 0.01 mm, and removing the springs
Subscripts
in suction condition
out discharge condition
th theoretical value
real measured value
v volumetric
is isentropic
prone to fatigue while keeping tight contact between the vanes
and cylinder wall.
2. The expander prototype
2.1. Basic structure
As shown in Fig. 1, the rotary vane expander is of the double
acting type, i.e., it has two inlet ports and outlet ports symmetri-
cally arranged in the cylinder. There are 7 vanes in each rotor,
which means 14 identical working volumes experience the
sequential suction, expansion and discharge processes in each rev-
olution. Since this kind of expander does not need either suction
valve or discharge valve, the suction and discharge phases have
to be prearranged by designing proper positions of the suction
and discharge ports. Owing to the symmetrical feature of the dou-
ble acting type expander, the radial forces acting on the rotor are
almost balanced, and hereby only two ball bearings are applied
on the right end to support the shaft, mainly bearing the unbal-
anced axial force. The shaft extended out is coupled with a gener-
ator for both consumption and measurement of the power output.
A set of shaft seals is used to prevent the high pressure gas from
flowing out of the expander.
The main geometric parameters together with the suction/dis-
charge port arrangement of the expander prototype are shown in
Table 1.
2.2. Leakage paths and sealing measures
Gas leakage occurs through five paths in the rotary vane expan-
der, as shown in Fig. 2a. The high pressure gas in the suction port
flows directly into the discharge port through the leakage path 1,
i.e., the gap between the cylinder inner wall and the rotor outer
wall. Leakage path 2 is the clearance between the two end surfaces
of the rotor and the end cover. If the vane fails to contact the cyl-
inder wall tightly, leakage path 3 exists between the vane tip and
the cylinder inner wall. In leakage path 4, high pressure gas leaks
into the adjacent low pressure chamber through the clearance be-
tween the end surfaces of the vane and the end cover. Leakage path
5 is the gap between the vane and vane slot, through which gas
leakage flow exists between two adjacent chambers.
Early experimental study of the rotary vane expander by the
authors [16] demonstrated that the vanes tended to stay at the slot
bottom instead of flying out towards the cylinder wall immediately
they passed the inlet port, which was coincident with the phenom-
enon observed by Badr et al. [13]. The loss of contact between the
vanes and cylinder wall was considered as the major factor of
excessively large leakage. In order to decrease the gas leakage
through leakage path 3, two springs were put in each slot under
the vane to help the vane tip contact the cylinder wall tightly, as
shown in Fig. 2b.
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B. Yang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 29 (2009) 2289–2296 2291

Fig. 1. The expander prototype.

Table 1
Geometric parameters and ports position of the expander prototype.

Diameter of rotor (mm) 46 Angle range of suction port 0°–10°

Length of longer axis of cylinder (mm) 54 Angle range of discharge port 110°–170°
Height of rotor (mm) 25 Gap clearance between left end surfaces (mm) 0.015
Vane number 7 Gap clearance between right end surfaces (mm) 0.015
Width of the vane (mm) 6 Gap clearance at seal arc (mm) 0.01
Height of vane (mm) 10 Gap clearance between vane and slot (mm) 0.01

Fig. 2. Leakage paths and sealing measures.

A seal was arranged in the position where the cylinder and rotor
‘‘contacts”, i.e., the seal arc, so that the leakage directly from the
suction port into the discharge port could be reduced to be as small
as possible, though the friction loss would be larger. As shown in
Fig. 2b, a seal slot was arranged in the cylinder throughout the seal
arc, and an elastic rubber together with a metal vane was put in the
seal slot. With the help of the elastic force of the rubber, the metal
vane in the seal slot could keep tight contact with the rotor as well
as the vanes in the rotor slots, thus improving the sealing at the
seal arc.
3. Experimental investigation
3.1. Experimental setup for expander performance study
flows through a Coriolis mass flow meter, where the mass flow rate
m_ real is obtained, and enters the expander. Both pressure and tem-
perature at the expander inlet/outlet ports are measured, by which
the specific enthalpy hin and density qin in the suction state can be
calculated. The specific enthalpy hout is determined by the two-
phase outlet pressure pout or temperature Tout of the expander
according to ideal isentropic process. The power output of the ex-
pander Wreal is consumed by the electrical generator and measured
by the torque and speed transducers between the expander and
generator. The rotating speed n of the expander can be adjusted
by changing the electrical resistance load of the generator. With
this experimental setup, the volumetric and isentropic efficiencies
of the expander can be estimated as follows.
The volumetric efficiency gv is defined as

_
m
Based on the typical transcritical CO2 refrigeration system, an gv ¼ _ th ð1Þ
mreal
experimental system for both function validation and performance
study of the expander was established, as shown in Fig. 3. The high _ th of the expander can be cal-
where the theoretical mass flow rate m
pressure gas from the gas cooler of the CO2 refrigeration system culated by
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2292 B. Yang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 29 (2009) 2289–2296
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the experimental system.
_ th ¼ 2  nv  V e  n  q=60
m ð2Þ
In Eq. (2), nv is the vane number and Ve is the volume of the working
chamber in the position immediately after it passes the suction
port.
The isentropic efficiency gis is defined as
W real
gis ¼
W th
The theoretical work output is calculated by
_ th  ðhout  hin Þ
W th ¼ m
3.2. Methodology to record the p–h diagram
Analyzing the p–h diagram is very helpful to understand the
internal working process of the expander. In order to record the
p–h diagram, four pressure sensors were arranged inside the ex-
pander prototype in different positions, as shown in Fig. 4a. Two
pressure sensors (3 and 4) were installed in the suction port and
discharge port, respectively. The other two pressure sensors (1
and 2) were installed inside the expansion chambers at an angle
of 35° and 75° from the central line of inlet port, respectively.
Based on this arrangement, the p–h diagram in one cycle including
the suction, expansion and discharge processes can be obtained by
combining the pressure signals recorded from pressure sensors 1
Fig. 4. Methodology to record the p–h diagram.
and 2. Pressure sensor 1 is responsible for recording the pressure
changes from 35° to 86°, which involves the whole suction process
(35°–61°) and part of the expansion process (61°–86°). Pressure
sensor 2 is responsible for recording the pressure changes from
75° to 125°, which consists of part of the expansion process (75°–
110°) and the whole discharge process (110°–125°). The pressure
signals from 75° to 86° are overlapped for the two pressure sensors.
3.3. Observation of the vane movement
Excessively large internal gas leakage, which was observed at
early stage of performance study of the expander prototype, drove
the authors to investigate the root causes for this. Among these
leakage sources, the loss of contact between the vane tip and the
cylinder wall was supposed to be the crucial one. So, understand-
ing what happens to the vanes during operation of the expander
was the concern and a high speed video was then applied to catch
a video recording of the vane movement through the transparent
end plate as shown in Fig. 5. The high speed video has the highest
rate of 6688 pictures per second.
In order to check the effects of the springs on the sealing
through the gap between the vane tip and the cylinder inner wall,
two springs were put in each of four neighboring slots underneath
the vane. The position of each vane in the slot can be identified
from the video recording clearly, and the distance between the
vane and the vane slot bottom can be analyzed by the software
of the high video system.
ð3Þ
4. Experiment results and discussion
4.1. Comparative analysis of the working processes by means of p–h
ð4Þ
diagrams
The working processes including the suction, expansion and
discharge stages for the expander with springs in the vane slots
can be understood by analyzing the p–h diagrams. Since the inves-
tigation was focused on the effects of springs in the slots on seal-
ing, the p–h diagrams were compared between two cases, i.e.,
with and without springs in the slots.
4.1.1. Expander with springs in vane slots
By comparing the p–h diagram in Fig. 6 with the ideal one in
Fig. 4b, it can be observed that the switch of the pressure signal
for sensor 1 from one chamber to the next one takes a short period
(from 35° to 40° in Fig. 6), which can be explained by the fact that
the vane with a thickness of 6 mm has to spend some period of
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B. Yang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 29 (2009) 2289–2296
Fig. 5. High speed video system for recording the vane movement.
Fig. 6. p–h diagram for expander with springs.
time passing the bore where the sensor is installed. At the rotation
angle of 55°, the suction port begins to disconnect with the work-
ing chamber and the pressure inside tends to drop, which means
the expansion process begins. After the suction port is totally
closed to the working chamber, the gradually increasing volume
of the closed working chamber leads to corresponding decrease
in the pressure inside the chamber. In the range of angle from
55° to 70°, the pressure in the working chamber has a decrease
from 6.5 to 5.0 MPa owing to the expansion process.
It is interesting that the decrease in the pressure inside the
working chamber gets slower after the rotating angle passes 70°,
which could be attributed to the larger leakage from the adjacent
high pressure chamber. At the angle of 86°, pressure sensor 1 be-
gins to collect the pressure signals of the next chamber but the
pressure sensor 2 continues recording the pressure signals of this
chamber. So, further drop in the pressure can be observed from
Fig. 6 until at the angle of 95° until it approaches the discharge
pressure. Due to the leakage from the neighboring high pressure
chamber, the pressure has an increase later. When the rotation an-
gle reaches the discharge angle (110°), the pressure drops to dis-
charge pressure. The fluctuation in the pressure for both the
suction and discharge processes is about 0.3 MPa.
4.1.2. Expander without springs in vane slots
In order to check if the springs in the slots have positive effects
on the expander performance, the comparative experiments were
carried out, in which the springs were taken out of the slots. During
the experiment, a phenomenon was observed that the pressure dif-
2293
ference between the inlet port and the outlet port decreased by al-
most 50% in comparison with the case with springs in the slots,
which resulted in the drop of the rotating speed from 600 to
400 rpm. This means that a much larger leakage should have oc-
curred inside the expander, which leads to the guess that the gap
between the vane and the cylinder wall should be the key factor
of the increased leakage. In other words, the springs in the slots
are helpful to the sealing associated with the vanes. Detailed anal-
ysis of the springs’ effects has to be made from the p–h diagram as
follows.
As shown in Fig. 7, the p–h diagram for the expander without
springs differs from that with springs (see Fig. 6) mainly in two as-
pects. Firstly, the duration for a cycle changes from 51° to 102°,
which is twice as long as the ideal one for the expander prototype
with seven vanes. Secondly, the two pressure sensors have both re-
corded the whole working processes for the expander without
springs, while the two pressure sensors have to combine their sig-
nals to compose the whole working process for the expander with
springs. From these two phenomena, it can be suggested that every
three neighboring vanes constitute a working chamber, which
means the vane in between does not contact the cylinder wall at
most of the rotation angles. This fact can be explained as follows.
As shown in Fig. 8, at the rotation angle of 0°, i.e., as the vane A
arrives at the inlet port, two dependent working chambers should
be formed, one between vanes A and B and another between vanes
B and C. According to the p–h diagram in Fig. 7, however, the pres-
sure profiles recorded by the two sensors tend to be in the same
level, which indicates that the pressures inside these two cham-
bers are almost the same. In other words, the expected expansion
owing to the increase in the volume seems almost not to happen;
the drop in the pressure mainly occurs at the end of the cycle as the
discharge port is connected to the working chamber, i.e., from 100°
to 110° in Fig. 7. From above analyses, it can be concluded that
vane B does not contact the cylinder wall in a wide range of angles,
just like in Fig. 8b. Correspondingly, the chamber between vanes A
and B and the chamber between vane B and C combine together
into one working chamber, which experiences small increase in
the volume and hereby slight expansion. In short, almost no
built-in expansion occurs for the expander without springs due
to the loss of contact between some vanes and cylinder wall.
4.2. Understanding the working process with the vane movement
In order to explain the phenomena observed from the p–h dia-
grams, the high speed video recording of the vane movement
was used to understand what happens to the vanes during
Fig. 7. p–h diagram for expander without springs.
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2294 B. Yang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 29 (2009) 2289–2296

Fig. 8. Vane positions at various rotation angles.

Fig. 9. Experiment results for the vane movement obtained from high speed video.

operation of the expander. Fig. 9a demonstrates one of the pictures
caught by the high speed video at certain angle. From this figure,
one can see clearly that the vanes C, E, F and G, which have springs
underneath them, contact the cylinder wall tightly. Correspond-
ingly, the vanes A, B and D, which have no springs in the slots,
do not contact the cylinder wall at all. Further analysis of the vane
movement was provided by the test data about the distance be-
tween the vane and the slot bottom in one cycle, as shown in
Fig. 9b. This figure shows that the vanes with springs in the slots
have much different behaviors in comparison with the vanes with-
out springs in the slots; they are pushed towards the slot bottom
by the radial inlet flow firstly and then rebound back to the cylin-
der wall at the rotation angle 20°, keeping contact with the cylin-
der inner wall hereafter. For the vanes with out springs in the slots,
however, they move nearly half towards the cylinder wall after
rebounding from the slot bottom and then drop quickly down-
wards the slot bottom again at the angle of 70°, where they re-
bound quickly upwards and keep contact with the cylinder wall.
The impact of the radial gas flow during suction was considered
to be the root cause for the loss of contact between the vanes
and cylinder wall, and the modeling of the vane dynamics will be
carried out in the near future.
4.3. Effects of the seal at the seal arc
Although the springs in the vane slots can improve the sealing,
the expander still demonstrates rather low volumetric efficiencies
at various working conditions. The maximal value is about 30% at
1300 rpm. This drives the authors to identify the other leakage
sources inside the expander that cause excessively large leakage.
As shown in Fig. 2, a seal was arranged in the prototype nearby
the seal arc to prevent the direct gas leakage from the inlet port
into the outlet port. A significant improvement on the sealing
can be seen by comparing the p–h diagram without the seal
(Fig. 6) and the p–h diagram with the seal (Fig. 10). Owing to better
sealing and less leakage for the expander with seal at the seal arc,
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B. Yang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 29 (2009) 2289–2296
Fig. 10. p–h diagram for expander with seal.
the pressure at the inlet port increases from 6.5 to 8.5 MPa and the
pressure difference across the expander increases from 2.0 to
2.7 MPa. From the p–h diagram (Fig. 10), a perfect expansion pro-
cess from the supercritical region to the subcritical region can be
observed, which has never occurred before the seal was installed.
4.4. Efficiencies of the expander with springs and seal
The performance of the modified expander was measured at
various rotating speeds by adjusting the load of the expander.
The suction pressure of the expander ranged from 7.5 to 9.0 MPa
while the suction temperature ranged from 32.4 to 44.3 °C. The
discharge pressure of the expander changed from 4.8 to 6.4 MPa
and the discharge temperature was the saturation temperature.
The efficiencies at the test conditions are shown in Fig. 11. It can
be seen that the volumetric efficiency increases with the rotation
speed till it reaches about 1000 rpm, after which the volumetric
efficiency almost keeps at the same level of about 29%. At the
low speeds below 1000 rpm, the rise in the rotation speed leads
to better sealing effects and higher volumetric efficiency. However,
the high speed has a limited influence on the sealing effects be-
cause the gas leakage at some positions, e.g., the leakage through
the gaps between the end surfaces of the rotor and end cover will
not reduce with the increased speed.
[10] J. Yang, L. Zhang, Y. J. Shi, Development and performance analysis of a two
Fig. 11. Efficiencies of the expander.
2295
The isentropic efficiency has an optimal value of 23% at the
speed of 800 rpm and then decreases with the rotation speed. This
can be explained by the fact that the friction losses increase more
quickly than the gains from the improved sealing after 800 rpm.
5. Conclusions
The working process especially the internal leakage of a rotary
vane expander prototype was investigated in this paper mainly
by comparing the recorded p–h diagrams of expander with and
without the springs in the vane slots and seal at the seal arc, vari-
ous conditions. The following conclusions can be drawn.
(1) The springs installed in the vane slots have a significant
improvement on the sealing by keeping the vane contact
the cylinder inner wall tightly. Without the springs, the adja-
cent vanes demonstrate different behaviors and three neigh-
boring vanes instead of two form an integrated working
chamber, which means that the in-between vane cannot
contact the cylinder wall at all.
(2) According to the high speed video recording of the vane
movement, the impact of the inlet gas flow on the vanes is
the root cause for the loss of contact between the vanes and
the cylinder wall for the expander without springs in the slots.
(3) Arrangement of a seal at the seal arc is helpful to reduce the
gas leakage directly from the inlet port to the outlet port.
(4) The increase in the rotational speed can improve the volu-
metric efficiency significantly till the speed reaches
1000 rpm, after which the volumetric efficiency keeps at
the level of about 29%. The isentropic efficiency has a maxi-
mal value of 23% at 800 rpm for the prototype.
Acknowledgements
The study presented in this paper was supported by program
for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-06-0836)
and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.
50576072). The authors thank Professor Takeshi KAWAI for his
valuable suggestion on the paper organization.
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