Final Report Power Generation from Low Temperature Sources Utilizing a Stirling Engine
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Department of Mechanical Engineering 10-203 Donadeo Innovation Centre for Engineering, www.mece.ualberta.ca Tel: 780.492.3598 Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 1H9 Final Report Power Generation From Low Temperature Sources Utilizing A Stirling Engine Date: 1st March 2018 Name: David S. Nobes, Alexander J. Hunt Title: Professor Company: University of Alberta Department Mechanical Engineering Address: 10-281 Donadeo Innovation Centre for Engineering 9211-116 Street NW, University of Alberta Phone: 780 492 7031 Fax: 780 492 2200 Email: [email protected] with financial support from Alberta Innovates and Terrapin Geothermics Inc. Disclaimer Alberta Innovates (“AI”) and her Majesty the queen in right of Alberta make no warranty, express or implied, nor assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information contained in this publication, nor that use thereof infringe on privately owned rights. The views and opinions of the author expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of AI or her majesty the Queen in right of Alberta. The directors, officers, employees, agents and consultants of AI and the Government of Alberta are exempted, excluded and absolved from all liability for damage or injury, howsoever caused, to any person in connection with or arising out of the use by that person for any purpose of this publication or its contents. The University of Alberta makes no warranty, express or implied, nor assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information contained in this publication, nor that use thereof infringes on privately owned rights. The views and opinions of the author expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Alberta. The directors, officers, employees, agents, students and consultants of the University of Alberta are exempted, excluded and absolved from all liability for damage or injury, howsoever caused, to any person in connection with or arising out of the use by that person for any purpose of this publication or its contents. i | P a g e Executive Summary (Non-Confidential) A collaboration between the Dynamic Thermal Energy Conversion Laboratory (DTECL) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the University of Alberta, Terrapin Geothermics and Alberta Innovates(AI) ) has been established to develop low temperature Stirling engines to extract usable amounts of electricity from low grade heat sources. These low-grade heat sources include geothermal brines and industrial waste heat streams that will have temperatures of Tmax < 100 °C. The work undertaken is directed towards proposing the most promising low temperature Stirling engine configuration that will best succeed with the low-grade heat operation conditions. To accomplish this goal, four different configurations were designed and investigated. A 90° Gamma, an inline Gamma (at two scales), an opposed piston Alpha and a Franchot double acting Alpha were designed and brought to different stages of development at the time of the writing of this report, ranging from extensive experimental testing to assembly. In addition to the design and build process, predictive models were developed, instrumentation systems were tested and several specialized experimental setups were designed and used to characterize seals, piston designs and heat exchangers. A number of challenges delayed the collection of sufficient experimental data to provide a quantified UNIT recommendation. In addressing these challenges, a deeper understanding of rapid prototyping manufacturing process, the impact of forced work on engine performance and manufacturing low-cost piston seals have all been achieved. Many of the initial designs were redesigned to consider these findings and although the goal of the project was not achieved, the project has advanced significantly toward the final goal of extracting useful electrical energy from low temperature sources. Detailed experimental results for the 90° Gamma have been collected and compared with the predictive models that have been developed. This engine, the most advanced configuration in current use, was originally designed as a high temperature (Tmax ~ 650 °C) but was reconfigured to operate at a significantly lower temperature (Tmax > 180 °C). Investigation of the different loss mechanisms for this configuration has highlighted that mechanical losses and ineffective heat transfer are the main important phenomenon when designing Stirling engine for low temperature operation. A conclusion from this work also, is that these two loss mechanisms will also be paramount in the design of any other configuration of Stirling engine. As these two loss mechanisms can be substantial compared to the amount of power generated from a low temperature source, they will remain dominant regardless of the configuration of Stirling engine. Future work in this area will need to pay particular attention to all loss mechanisms and how the interact with each other. This will require the development of a third order, fully couple model of a low temperature Stirling engine. To offset mechanical losses, which would remain relatively constant for a particular mechanism, much larger scale engines should be constructed. Understanding of the fluid mechanics and heat transfer in fully reciprocating systems and how these can be scaled to physically large engines is also limited as requires further, significant investigation. Future work should focus on these to ensure that significant power for a particular engine configuration can be achieved. ii | P a g e Personnel The following is a list of personnel who have undertaken activities in the project. Some of these being directly funded from the project while others have been associated with the project and provided insight. Person Position Shahzeb Mirza CO-OP Student (8 months) Jakub Piwowarczyk CO-OP Student (8 months) Jason Michaud MSc Student Steven Middleton Summer Student (now MSc) David Miller MSc Student Michael Nicol-Seto Summer Student (now MSc) Connor Speer MSc Student Calynn Stumpf MSc Student Dr. Mouhammad El Hassan Research Associate Alexander Hunt Research Engineer Dr. Cagri Ayranci Assistant Professor Dr. C.R. (Bob) Koch Professor Dr. Alexandra Komrakova Assistant Professor Dr. David S. Nobes Professor iii | P a g e Table of Contents Disclaimer ........................................................................................................................................ i Executive Summary (Non-Confidential) ........................................................................................ ii Personnel ........................................................................................................................................ iii 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Need and Opportunity ...................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Low grade heat opportunities ........................................................................................... 1 1.2.1 Geothermal energy .................................................................................................... 1 1.2.2 Waste heat energy ..................................................................................................... 2 1.3 The Stirling engine ........................................................................................................... 3 1.4 Aim and Scope ................................................................................................................. 5 2 Methods and Materials ............................................................................................................ 7 2.1 Mathematical Modelling of the Stirling Engine Cycle .................................................... 7 2.1.1 Basic physical modeling ........................................................................................... 7 2.1.2 First order model – ideal isothermal analysis ........................................................... 9 2.1.3 First order model - Adiabatic model ....................................................................... 10 2.1.4 Second order models ............................................................................................... 11 2.2 Configurations ................................................................................................................ 13 2.2.1 The 90° Gamma ...................................................................................................... 13 2.2.2 The In-Line Gamma ................................................................................................ 15 2.2.3 The increased scale In-Line Gamma ....................................................................... 16 2.2.4 The Opposed Piston Alpha ..................................................................................... 17 2.2.5 The Franchot Double Acting Alpha ........................................................................ 19 2.3 Engine Test Bed ............................................................................................................. 21 2.3.1 Data acquisition system .......................................................................................... 21 2.3.2 Engine control ........................................................................................................