Analysis of Osmotic Heat Engine for Low Temperature Waste Heat Recovery
Forfatter
Semester
4. semester
Uddannelse
Udgivelsesår
2024
Afleveret
2024-05-30
Antal sider
58
Abstract
This project examines the use of an Osmotic Heat Engine (OHE) to utilise low temperature waste heat (40°C-60°C). The proposed system used NaCl as the solute and pure water as the solvent, as most current research revolves around organic salts and not much research has been conducted on systems using NaCl. A membrane model was constructed to examine how the membrane is affected by variations of parameters, both in terms of fluid properties and properties related to the membrane itself. The membrane model is implemented in a closed loop system model to model the OHE process and once again examine the effect of individual parameters. This led to an optimisation to examine the optimal performance of the system, which found that the optimal system efficiency was approximately 0.13% and found that the system generates approximately 3.5 times the amount of electricity supplied. However, in order to do this, the components have to be unreasonably large, which leads to the conclusion that the current solution is unfeasible for the purpose. This might change with further design modifications and research in the field.
Emneord