THEORETICAL INVESTIGATION OF AN AMMONIA–WATER POWER AND REFRIGERATION THERMODYNAMIC CYCLE

Abstract

A combined thermal power and cooling cycle proposed by Goswami is under theoretically investigation. The proposed cycle combines the Rankine and absorption refrigeration cycles, using a binary ammonia– water mixture as the working fluid. This cycle can be used as a bottoming cycle using waste heat from a conventional power cycle or an independent cycle using low temperature sources such as geothermal and solar energy. For a solar heat source, optimization of the second law efficiency is most appropriate, since the spent heat source fluid is recycled through the solar collectors. The optimization results verified that the cycle could be optimized using the generalized reduced gradient method.