Study of an Organic Rankine Cycle Associated to a Biomass-Fuelled Boiler for Cogeneration Application

This paper presents a cogeneration system composed of a biomass-fuelled boiler and of an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). The first part of the paper describes the model of the system. This model is built by interconnecting the sub-models of the different components: heat exchangers, pump, boiler and scroll expander. In the second part, the results of an experimental study are presented : this study aimed at evaluating the performances of an ORC working with refrigerant R123 and using scroll expander. The above models are validated using test results. The last part of the paper investigates, through simulations, the performances of the cogeneration system and points out some possible improvements.