Thermal‐economic analysis of a transcritical Rankine power cycle with reheat enhancement for a low‐grade heat source

A thermal‐economic analysis of a transcritical Rankine power cycle with reheat enhancement using a low‐grade industrial waste heat is presented. Under the identical operating conditions, the reheat cycle is compared to the non‐reheat baseline cycle with respect to the specific net power output, the thermal efficiency, the heat exchanger area, and the total capital costs of the systems. Detailed parametric effects are investigated in order to maximize the cycle performance and minimize the system unit cost per net work output. The main results show that the value of the optimum reheat pressure maximizing the specific net work output is approximately equal to the one that causes the same expansion ratio across each stage turbine. Relative performance improvement by reheat process over the baseline is augmented with an increase of the high pressure but a decrease of the turbine inlet temperature. Enhancement for the specific net work output is more significant than that for the thermal efficiency under each condition, because total heat input is increased in the reheat cycle for the reheat process. The economic analysis reveals that the respective optimal high pressures minimizing the unit heat exchanger area and system cost are much lower than that maximizing the energy performance. The comparative analysis identifies the range of operating conditions when the proposed reheat cycle is more cost effective than the baseline. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.