Experimental and CFD analysis of rotary multi vane expander for small capacity generation

Mechanical Engineering Department, Institut Teknologi Nasional Bandung, 40124 Bandung, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: m.aziz.mahardika@itenas.ac.id

Abstract

Every year, Indonesia's population increase so as energy demand. To fulfill Indonesia's energy needs, the capacity of energy production should be increased. Indonesia government has made a solution by propose 35.000 MW program to increase energy production and electrification ratio in Indonesia. An insulated area where electricity did not reach, has many problem to get electricity such as limited infrastructure, low fuel energy content, and expensive turbine. To solve these problem, multi-vane expander (MVE) can be used to extract the low energy and is cheap. MVE have many advantages such as cheap, easy to manufacture, able to operate with 2 phase, and able to low speed operation. But, the disadvantage of this type of expander is leakage. In this paper, experimental and CFD analysis of MVE are conducted. The experiment generated power of 25.7 watt with isentropic and volumetric efficiency of 11.6% and 11.7% by using operating condition of 1.5 bar, 115.6 °C, 626 rpm, and mass flow rate of 80 kg/h. The CFD model of the expander is created with the same dimension and operating conditions as experimental. The result for isentropic efficiency is inversely proportional with mass flow rate and for volumetric efficiency, power, and expander rotation are directly proportional with mass flow rate.