Thermodynamic performance assessment of an ammonia–water Rankine cycle for power and heat production

Abstract In this paper, an ammonia–water based Rankine cycle is thermodynamically analyzed for renewable-based power production, e.g. solar, geothermal, biomass, oceanic-thermal, and nuclear as well as industrial waste heat. Due to the nature of the ammonia–water mixture, changes in its concentration allow thermodynamic cycles to adapt to fluctuations in renewable energy sources, which is an important advantage with respect to other working fluids. The non-linearity of the working fluid’s behaviour imposes that each cycle must be optimized based upon several parameters. A model has been developed to optimize the thermodynamic cycle for maximum power output and carry out a parametric study. The lowest temperature state of the system is fixed, and three other parameters are variables of study, namely, maximum system temperature, ammonia concentration and energy ratio, which is a newly introduced parameter. Energy ratio indicates the relative position of the expansion state and is defined in terms of enthalpies. The study is conducted over a concentration range of 0–0.5, the maximum temperature studied varies between 75 °C and 350 °C for extreme cases, and the energy ratio from saturated liquid to superheated vapour. As a result, the optimal expansion energy ratio is predicted. The cycle efficiencies are drastically affected by the concentrations and temperatures. Depending on the source temperature, the cycle energy efficiency varies between 5% and 35% representing up to 65% of the Carnot limit. The optimal energy ratio has been determined for several concentrations and reported graphically.