Applied Energy 88 (2011) 21832190

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Dynamic modeling and optimal control strategy of waste heat recovery

Organic Rankine Cycles
Sylvain Quoilin a,, Richard Aumann b, Andreas Grill b, Andreas Schuster b, Vincent Lemort a,
Hartmut Spliethoff b
a
b

Thermodynamics Laboratory, University of Lige, Campus du Sart Tilman, B49, B-4000 Lige, Belgium
Technische Universitt Mnchen, Institute for Energy Systems, Boltzmannstr. 15, 85748 Garching, Germany

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 24 May 2010
Received in revised form 2 August 2010
Accepted 5 January 2011

Keywords:
Organic Rankine Cycle
Waste heat recovery
ORC
Volumetric expander
Dynamic modeling
Control strategy

a b s t r a c t
Organic Rankine Cycles (ORCs) are particularly suitable for recovering energy from low-grade heat
sources. This paper describes the behavior of a small-scale ORC used to recover energy from a variable
ow rate and temperature waste heat source. A traditional static model is unable to predict transient
behavior in a cycle with a varying thermal source, whereas this capability is essential for simulating
an appropriate cycle control strategy during part-load operation and start and stop procedures. A
dynamic model of the ORC is therefore proposed focusing specically on the time-varying performance
of the heat exchangers, the dynamics of the other components being of minor importance. Three different
control strategies are proposed and compared. The simulation results show that a model predictive control strategy based on the steady-state optimization of the cycle under various conditions is the one
showing the best results.
2011 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Interest in low-grade heat recovery has grown dramatically in
the past decades. An important number of new solutions have been
proposed to generate electricity from low temperature heat
sources and are now applied to such diversied elds as solar thermal power, biological waste heat, engine exhaust gases, and
domestic boilers. The potential for exploiting waste heat sources
from engine exhaust gases or industrial processes is particularly
promising [1], but these can vary in terms of ow rate and temperature over time, which complicates the regulation of waste heat
recovery (WHR) devices.
Among the proposed solutions, the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC)
system is the most widely used. Its two main advantages are the
simplicity and the availability of its components. In such a system,
the working uid is an organic substance, better adapted than
water to lower heat source temperatures. Unlike the traditional
Rankine power cycles, local and small scale power generation is
made possible by ORC technology.
WHR ORCs have been studied in a number of previous works:
Badr et al. [2], Gu et al. [3], Dai et al. [4], used simple thermodynamic models with constant pump and expander efciencies to

Corresponding author. Tel.: +32 4 366 48 22; fax: +32 4 366 48 12.
E-mail address: squoilin@ulg.ac.be (S. Quoilin).
0306-2619/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2011.01.015

compare different candidate working uids. They showed that

the cycle efciency is very sensitive to the evaporating pressure,
and that the optimal working uid depends strongly on the
considered application. Larjola [5] studied the use of an integrated
high speed, oil-free turbogenerator-feed pump for a 100 kWe WHR
ORC. Advanced cycle congurations have also been studied:
Gnutek et al. [6]. proposed an ORC cycle with multiple pressure
levels and sliding vane expansion machines using R123 in order
to maximize the use of the heat source; Chen et al. [7] studied
the transcritical CO2 power cycle as an alternative to the ORC cycle
using R123 and showed that the generated output power is slightly
higher with the transcritical cycle.
Experimental studies of small-scale ORC units demonstrated
that volumetric expanders are good candidates for small scale
power generation, because of their reduced number of moving
parts, reliability, wide output power range, broad availability,
and good isentropic effectiveness [8]. In particular, experimental
studies on scroll expanders showed very promising results, with
reported isentropic effectivenesss ranging from 48% to 68%
[913]. The screw expander is another very promising solution. It
operates at a slightly higher output power and shows the advantage of accepting a high liquid fraction at the inlet, allowing the
design of wet cycles [14].
Although an abundant literature is available on the working
uid selection for ORCs, few papers propose a detailed modeling
of the cycle: static models have been proposed by Quoilin et al.

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S. Quoilin et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 21832190

Nomenclature
A
c
CS
FF
h
h
H
Kp
M
_
M
N
Nrot
p
Q_
q_
r
rv,in
s
T
t
U
v
V
V_
w
W
X
x
x

area, m2
specic heat, J/(kg K)
control signal
lling factor,
heat transfer coefcient, W/(m2 K)
specic enthalpy, J/(kg K)
transfer function,
proportional gain,
mass, kg
mass ow rate, kg/s
number of nodes
rotating speed, rpm
pressure, Pa
heat power, W
heat ux, W/m2
ratio,
internal built-in volume ratio,
complex Laplace variable,
temperature, C
time, s
heat transfer coefcient, W/(m2 K)
specic volume, m3/kg
volume, m3
volume ow rate, m3/s
specic work, J/kg
amount of work, J
capacity fraction,
vapor quality,
axial distance, m

[15] and Kane [13], and a dynamic model of a WHR ORC using a
turbine was proposed by Wei et al. [16]. However, to the authors
knowledge, the dynamic modeling of a small-scale ORC using volumetric expander has never been proposed. In addition, the behavior and the regulation of such a cycle under variable heat source
conditions has never been studied.
This paper aims at proposing a dynamic model of a small-scale
ORC using a volumetric expander. This model is then used to optimize the working conditions and to address the issue of the control
strategy for variable waste heat sources.

Greek symbols
e
effectiveness
g
efciency
u
level fraction
q
density, kg/m3
s
time constant, s
Subscripts and superscripts
corr
correlated
cd
condenser
cf
cold uid
em
eletromechanical
ev
evaporator
ex
exhaust
exp
expander
i
relative to cell i
in
internal
f
working uid
hf
hot uid
hr
heat recovery
l
liquid
optim
optimum
pp
pump
ref
reference
s
swept
su
supply
tp
two-phase
v
vapor
v
volumetric
w
wall

The present work focuses on ORCs operating with variable heat

sources. A generic variable heat source is thus dened and will be
used to validate and to compare different control strategies. This
heat source is considered to be hot water under pressure with
variable temperature and ow rate, and is described in Fig. 2. This
heat source could typically correspond to the prole internal
combustion engine exhaust gases, via an intermediary heat transfer uid loop.

2. System description and methodology

Fig. 1 shows the conceptual scheme of the considered system.
Even though the goal of this paper is not to describe a system in
particular, but to propose a methodology for optimizing and controlling waste heat recovery ORCs, the parameters selected for
the models proposed in Section 3 correspond to realistic components, typical of small-scale ORCs: The expander is an oil-free scroll
expander, described in [11], the heat exchanger parameters are
typical of coaxial evaporators and condensers. The pump is a volumetric pump (e.g. a diaphragm pump), whose speed is controlled
by means of an inverter. The expander speed is also controlled with
an inverter and varies within a reasonable range specied by the
manufacturer.
The selected working uid is R245fa. It should be noted that
uid selection is an important and preliminary issue in ORC design.
However, this selection is out of the scope of this paper, and it is
therefore assumed that the study of the optimal working uid
was previously carried out.

Fig. 1. Conceptual scheme of the modeled ORC system.

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S. Quoilin et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 21832190

3.1. Evaporator model

While large scale ORCs usually use different heat exchangers for
the pre-heating (liquid) zone and for the vaporization (two-phase)
zone, small-scale ORCs preferably use one single heat exchanger
for the whole process.
The evaporator model is inspired by the single-phase heat
exchanger model proposed in the Thermopower Modelica library
[19]. The heat exchanger is discretized into (N  1) cells, where
the energy and mass conservation equations are applied (see
Fig. 3). The momentum balance is neglected and the pressure is
assumed to be constant in the whole heat exchanger.
For each cell, a heat exchange area, a wall mass, a uid volume
and a heat transfer coefcient are dened:
Fig. 2. Temperature and mass ow rate of the dened heat source.

In order to maximize the amount of energy recovered from this

heat source, the working conditions of the ORC should constantly
be adapted to the heat source temperature and ow rate. A proper
control strategy must therefore be developed. The following methodology is proposed:
1. Static and dynamic models of the cycle are developed. The static
model differs from the dynamic model in that all the time derivatives are set to zero.
2. The static model is used to optimize the working conditions of
the cycle for a wide range of heat source and heat sink
conditions.
3. The optimized working points are used to dene a model-based
control strategy.
4. The control strategy is implemented in the dynamic model and
simulated with the random variable heat source. Its performance is nally compared to alternative control strategies.
In addition to the objective of maximizing the recovered energy,
the formation of droplets at the evaporator outlet must be avoided,
since it can damage certain types of expanders. A positive superheating must therefore always be maintained by the control
strategy.

Ai

A
;
N1

V
;
N1

Mw;i

Mw
N1

For both sides, the mass balance is written:

N1
X
1

dM i
_ N1
_ 1M
M
dt

Mi being the mass of uid in each cell, given by:

i  Vi
Mi q

with

q i

qi qi1
2

Neglecting the diffusion term, the energy conservation principle

gives:

Aq

_
dh
_ dh A dp dQ
M
dt
dx
dt dx

The heat exchanger is spatially discretized according to the nite volumes method, in the form of:

i 
Vi  q

dhi
_ i  hi1  hi Q_ i Ai  dp
M
dt
dt

_ i is the mean ow rate between nodes i and i + 1.

where M
The heat balance over the metal wall is expressed by:

cw  M w 
3. Dynamic modeling

Vi

dT w;i
A  q_ f ;i q_ hf ;i
dt

The heat uxes q_ are calculated by:

This section describes the modeling of each component of
the waste heat recovery ORC. The models are implemented
under Modelica and the uid properties are computed using the
ExternalMedia library [17] coupled to Fluidprop [18].

q_ f ;i U f ;i  T f ;i  T w;i

q_ hf ;i U hf ;i  T hf ;i  T w;i

Fig. 3. Modeling paradigm of the evaporator.

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S. Quoilin et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 21832190

The heat transfer coefcient on the hot uid side is set to a constant value. The heat transfer coefcient on the working uid side
is set to three different values depending on the uid state in the
cell. In order to avoid any inconsistency, the transition between
two different heat exchange coefcients is performed on a non null
quality width by interpolating between the two coefcients. The
transition between the liquid and the two-phase coefcient, for
example, is interpolated for 0.05 < x < 0.05, x being dened by:

h  hl
hv  hl

10

The average heat ow for each cell is nally computed on both

sides by:

q_ i q_ i1
Q_ Ai
2

11

The number of nodes selected for the present simulations is set

to 10, since it turns out to be a good tradeoff between accuracy and
computation time: the errors in the prediction of the steady-state
heat ow for N = 5, N = 10, N = 20 are respectively 7.6%, 2.16% and
1.2% compared to the case with N = 100 (Calculation performed in
the typical working conditions of the ORC with an evaporating
temperature of 85 C). The parameters of the evaporator model
are summarized in Table 1.
3.2. Expander model
The expander angular momentum is assumed negligible compared to the dynamics of the evaporator. A steady-state model is
therefore used.
Volumetric expanders, such as the scroll, screw or reciprocating
technologies present an internal built-in volume ratio (rv,in) corresponding to the ratio between the inlet pocket volume and the outlet pocket volume.
Under-expansion occurs when the internal pressure ratio imposed by the expander is lower than the system pressure ratio.
In that case, the pressure in the expansion chambers at the end
of the expansion process (pin) is higher than the pressure in the discharge line.
Over-expansion occurs when the internal pressure ratio imposed
by the expander is higher than the system pressure ratio.

Table 2
Expander model parameters.
Parameter

Value

Parameter

Value

rv,in
FF
Nrot,max

4.05
0.6
5500 rpm

Vs
Nrot,min

108 cm3
550 rpm

Under and over-expansion losses can be modeled by splitting

the expansion into two consecutive steps [11]:
 Isentropic expansion:

w1 hsu  hin

12

hi being the isentropic enthalpy at pressure pin.

 Constant volume expansion:

w2 v in  pin  pex

13

w2 is positive in case of under-expansion, and negative in case of

over-expansion (Fig. 4).
The total expansion work is then obtained by summing w1 and
w2.
Other losses such as internal leakage, supply pressure drop, heat
transfers and friction are lumped into one single mechanical efciency gmech:

_ exp M
_  w1 w2  g
W
mech

14

And, since the expansion is assumed adiabatic:

hex hsu 

_ exp
W
_
M

15

For given rotational speed and uid ow rate, the expander imposes the evaporating pressure [15]. This is computed by:

_ FF  qsu  V s  Nrot
M
60

16

FF being the lling factor (equivalent to the volumetric

efciency in compressor mode), set to a typical value provided
by Lemort et al. [11]. The expander model parameters are summarized in Table 2.
3.3. Condenser model

Table 1
Evaporator model parameters.
Parameter

Value

Parameter

Value (W/m2 K)

A
Vhf
Vf
Mw
N

3 m2
9.8 l
5.8 l
20 kg
10

Uhf
Uf,l
Uf,tp
Uf,v

1000
260
900
360

Dynamic behavior of the cycle with variable heat source temperature and ow rate being the main focus of this paper, the temperature and ow rate of the heat sink are assumed to be constant
_ cf cst; T cf ;su cst). This assumption entails only limin time (i.e. M
ited variations of the working conditions on the condenser, compared to the evaporator. It allows avoiding a dynamic model of
the condenser, and has the benecial effect of reducing the computational effort.
The condenser scheme is shown in Fig. 5. It is modeled by a constant pinch point value, dened by:

pinchcd minT f ;ex;cd  T cf ;su ; T f ;su;tp;cd  T cf ;ex;tp

Fig. 4. Under and over-expansion losses.

17

The subcooling at the condenser exhaust is also an input of the

model, and can be imposed in practice by making use of the static
pressure head between the pump and the liquid receiver, or by the
addition of a subcooler.
Given the subcooling and the pinch point, the condenser model
predicts the condensing temperature.
A liquid receiver model is added at the condenser exhaust, in order to absorb the liquid level uctuations of the evaporator. The total volume of the tank is a model parameter, and the liquid relative
level u is computed by:

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S. Quoilin et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 21832190

The cycle efciency gcycle:

W net gcycle 

t2

Q_ eV dt

24

t1

The heat recovery efciency ehr:

t2

Q_ eV dt ehr 

t1

Fig. 5. Condenser model.

t2

_ hf  hsu;hf  hhf ;ref dt

M

hhf,ref being the hot uid reference enthalpy at 25 C.

The overall energy conversion efciency is nally dened by:

Table 3
Condenser model parameters and inputs.

gov erall gcycle  ehr

Parameter

Value

Parameter

Value

Pinchcd
_ cd
M

10 K
0.5 kg/s

Vtank
Tcf,su

20 l
25 C

Table 4
Pump model parameters.
Parameter

Value

Parameter

V_ su;pp;max
a0
a2

0.25 l/s

gem,pp

0.93
0.2

a1
a3

d/
1
_ ex;cd  M
_ su;pp

 M
dt qf ;l  V tank

25

t1

Value

26

4. Control strategy
The goal of this work is to dene a control strategy for a smallscale ORC working with a heat source that varies in terms of temperature and mass ow.
The rst step is to optimize the working conditions of the cycle
for a given static heat source. As a general rule, the following statements should be taken into account:

0.9
0.11
0.06

18

The condenser model parameters are summarized in Table 3.

 The condensing pressure should be maintained as low as

possible.
 The superheating at the evaporator exhaust should be as low as
possible when using high molecular weight organic uids [21].
 The optimal evaporation temperature results of an optimization
of the overall heat recovery efciency (see below).
Increasing the evaporation temperature implies several antagonist effects:

3.4. Pump model

The pump internal isentropic efciency is dened by:

ein;pp

v su;pp  pex;pp  psu;pp

hex;pp  hsu;pp

19

An empirical law provided by Vetter [20] is tted by a thirdorder polynomial in the form of:

ein;pp a0 a1  logX pp a2  logX pp 2 a3  logX pp 3

20

Xpp being the pump capacity fraction dened by:

X pp

v su;pp M_ pp
V_ su;pp;max

21

Xpp is limited by the following boundary conditions: 0:1 6 X pp 6 1

An additional electromechanical efciency is added to obtain to
pump overall efciency:

eov erall;pp gem;pp  ein;pp

 The under-expansion losses in the expander are increased, and

its efciency is decreased.
 The heat recovery efciency is decreased since the heat source
is cooled down to a higher temperature.
 The expander specic work is increased since the pressure ratio
is increased.
These inuences are illustrated in Fig. 6. For this particular steady-state working point, an optimum evaporation temperature of
117 C is obtained.
In order to best match these conditions, two degrees of freedom
are available: the pump speed and the expander speed. These two
degrees of freedom are used to control the two main working conditions, i.e. the evaporating temperature and the superheating.

22

The different pump model parameters are summarized in

Table 4.
3.5. Cycle model
The global model of the cycle is obtained by interconnecting
each subcomponent model according to the causality scheme
described in [15].
Several performance indicators can be dened.
The net work output:

W net

t2

t1

_ exp  W
_ pp dt
W

23
Fig. 6. WHR effectiveness, cycle efciency and overall efciency.

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S. Quoilin et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 21832190

Table 5
Parameters of the PI controllers.
Parameter

Pump PI controller

Expander PI controller

Kp
b
ti

0.7
1
2s

2
1
3s

It should be noted that the action of these two parameters have

very different time constants. A modication of the pump ow rate
alters the working conditions of the evaporator and therefore
induces a change in the evaporating temperature and/or in the
amount of superheating, but with a delay due to the thermal and
uid dynamics of the heat exchanger. In contrast, a modication
of the expander speed induces an almost immediate change in
the evaporating pressure: the volumetric ow rate absorbed by
the device is modied, while the mass ow rate is kept constant;
the two ow rates are reconciled through a change in uid density,
mediated via a shift in vapor pressure.
The evaporating temperature being a more critical working condition than the superheating, it is decided to control the evaporating temperature with the expander speed and the superheating
with the pump ow rate.
PI controllers are used to maintain the desired working conditions. The choice of PI controllers over PID controllers is justied
by their satisfactory behavior in the simulations performed in Section 4 and by the higher sensitivity of PID controllers to measurement noise. The control signal is described by the equation:



Z
1
CS K p  b  e  e track  dt
ti

27

where e is the error between the present value and the set
point, both scaled between 0 and 1, b is the set point weight on
the proportional action, Kp is the proportional gain, and ti is the
integral time constant.
The control signal saturates at 0 and at 1. The variable track is
dened as the difference between CS and its saturated value, in order to avoid integral windup. Kp, b and ti are parameters to be
tuned. This is done manually, with the aim of minimizing the stabilization time towards a steady-state of the system. The following
parameters (Table 5) are obtained.
Three different control strategies are dened and are described
hereunder.
4.1. Constant evaporating temperature
The most common control strategy is to dene a constant evaporating temperature and superheating. In this case, it is not possible to know a priori which constant evaporating temperature will
be optimal for the process. This regulation strategy requires two
measurements: Tev and DTex,ev. It is presented in Fig. 7.
4.2. Optimum evaporating temperature
As shown in Fig. 6, an optimum evaporating temperature can be
obtained for given working conditions. Three inputs are sufcient

Fig. 7. First regulation strategy: constant evaporating temperature.

to determine this evaporating temperature: the condensation temperature, the heat source temperature and the heat source ow
rate.
However, it is important to base the control system on variables
that are easily measurable. In the systems under consideration
here, the mass ow rate of the heat source is difcult to measure
in a cost-effective way. On the other hand, the working uid ow
rate is easily accessible, either by direct measurement, or by rela_ hf can
tion to the pump speed. Since the superheating is xed, M
_ f , provided that the evaporating temperbe directly correlated to M
ature and the heat source temperature are known.
The optimal evaporating temperature can therefore be correlated to the heat source temperature, to the condensing temperature and to the working uid mass ow rate.
In order to determine this optimum over a broad range of working conditions the model described in Section 3 is implemented in
steady-state in Engineering Equation Solver [22]. The optimum
evaporating temperature is determined using the Golden Section
Search method [23] for 31 working points and for working conditions varying in the following range:

20 6 T cd  C 6 40
_ hf kg=s 6 0:15
0:05 6 M
120 6 T hf ;su  C 6 300
This range of working conditions is typical of a kW-scaled waste
heat recovery ORC working with a heat source varying from 120 to
300 C.
A linear regression is then performed in order to predict Tev. A
rst order polynomial is preferred to higher order expressions in
order to avoid the Runge phenomenon [24]. Due to the quadratic
character of the relationship between Tev and Thf,su, log(Thf,su) is
used instead. The following relationship is obtained, predicting
the optimal evaporating temperature with R2 = 98.4%:

_ f 0:93  T cd 90  logT hf ;su

T eV;optim 132  45  M

28

The principle of this regulation is presented in Fig. 8.

4.3. Correlated pump speed
A third regulation strategy is tested to obtain a faster reaction of
the pump to varying working conditions. The 31 optimized working points described in Section 4.2 are used to derive a relationship
between the optimized working uid ow rate, the heat source
temperature, the condensing temperature and the expander speed.
The expander speed is selected because it constitutes an indirect
measurement of the ow rate for a given evaporating temperature.
The correlated, optimized working uid ow rate is therefore the
ow rate that leads to the optimum evaporating temperature in
steady-state. It is dened as follows:

_ corr a0 a1  T hf a2  Nrot a3  T cd
M

29
2

The coefcients ai are identied with R = 97.7%.

Fig. 8. Second regulation strategy: optimal evaporating temperature.

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S. Quoilin et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 21832190

Fig. 9. Third regulation strategy: correlated pump speed.

In addition, the signal sent to the pump is ltered by a rst

order low-pass lter in order to avoid fast oscillations and
unsteadinesses. A time constant s of two seconds is selected. The
following transfer function is therefore used:

ss1

1
2s1

Fig. 11. Evolution of the superheating over time (2nd strategy).

30

The correlated pump speed regulation strategy is presented in

Fig. 9.
5. Dynamic simulation
The simulation model described in Section 3 is tested with the
generic heat source dened in Fig. 2. A simulation is run for each
control strategy and for ve constant evaporating temperatures
(80, 90, 100, 110 and 120 C) in order to compare their respective
performance.
5.1. Simulation results
Fig. 10 and Fig. 11 show the superheating and the evaporating
temperature with their set point for the second regulation strategy.
As expected, the evaporating temperature matches its set point
temperature better than the superheating due to the delayed action of a pump ow rate modication.
Fig. 11 shows however that the control system is able to maintain a positive superheating and therefore avoid the formation of
liquid droplets that could damage the expander.
Fig. 12 shows the expander speed for the different controls
strategies. It can be noted than for low evaporating temperatures,
the expander speed saturates to its maximum allowed value: the
evaporating temperature can no longer be maintained at its set
point value by the control system. For Tev = 120 C, the expander
speed reaches its minimum value between t = 20 s to t = 99 s.

Fig. 12. Expander speed for different control strategies.

Fig. 13. Superheating and quality at expander inlet (3rd strategy).

Table 6
Cycle performance.

Fig. 10. Optimal/actual evaporating temperatures (2nd strategy).

Control

gcycle (%)

ehr (%)

goverall (%)

Tev = 80 C
Tev = 100 C
Tev = 120 C
Tev,optim
_ corr
M

7.83
9.98
10.50
10.61
9.88

69.29
64.00
56.76
61.93
64.71

5.42
6.40
5.97
6.57
6.40

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S. Quoilin et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 21832190

control strategies, it cannot be used as a predictive model to accurately evaluate the energy recovery potential of a particular conguration. This is due to the various simplifying modeling hypothesis,
such as constant heat transfer coefcients, neglected pressure
drops, and constant pinch value.
Future work will concentrate on the improvement, on the validation, and on the exploitation of the dynamic model. The models
capabilities will be exploited in the context of start and stop procedures, fully automated heat source potential detection, and autonomous decision of starting the WHR system.
References

Fig. 14. Overall efciency vs. temperature (1st strategy).

Fig. 13 shows the uid quality at the expander exhaust for the
third regulation. Fluid superheating is almost never achieved (i.e.
xex,ev < 1 and DTex,ev < 0), which is not acceptable. Important uctuations are also noted.
5.2. Comparison between control strategies
The performance indicators are presented in Table 6 for each
control strategy.
The optimized evaporating temperature strategy is the one
yielding the highest overall efciency (6.6%). The constant evaporating temperature strategy also shows a good efciency for
100 < Tev < 110, but this efciency falls sharply for different evaporating temperatures (Fig. 14).
6. Conclusion
A dynamic model of a small-scale Organic Rankine Cycle has
been developed under the Modelica environment. A discretized
evaporator model has been used and the volumetric expander
model accounts for under and over-expansion losses.
The simulation results show that small-scale ORCs are well
adapted to waste heat recovery with variable heat source ow rate
and temperature. A proper control strategy must however be dened because cycle performance can drop rapidly. An overall waste
heat recovery efciency of 6.6% was obtained for the dened heat
source.
The control of both the expander and the working uid pump is
required in order to take the best prot of variable heat sources.
Three different control strategies were tested: a constant evaporating temperature, an optimized evaporating temperature depending on the actual working conditions, and a pump speed based
on the expander speed. The best results are obtained with the optimized evaporating temperature regulation. This regulation makes
use of a steady-state optimization model of the system run with
a wide range of parameters bracketing the possible working conditions. The drawback of a non-optimized constant evaporating temperature regulation strategy is the fact that the ideal evaporating
temperature cannot be known a priori. The third regulation strategy was not able to consistently maintain superheating at the expander inlet, resulting in unsteady operation compared with the
two rst strategies.
It should be noted that, although the dynamic model in its presents form is able to compare the relative performance of different

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