Lorenzo Galieti
Mechanical engineer focused on fluid dynamics and turbomachinery, together with combustion, heat transfer and mixture flows. Moved around Europe to study, first at ETH Zurich, now at the Von Karman Institute, and also to work at GE Aviation.
MSc Mechanical Engineering, Energy Flows and Processes, ETH Zürich, Switzerland (Feb 2020)
BSc Engineering Sciences, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy (Oct 2016)
Project Title: Mixtures as working fluids for geothermal ORC power plants
Host Institutions: TU Delft, PoliMi, Lu-Ve
Supervisory Team: Piero Colonna, David Bruhn, Paolo Silva, Stefano Filippini
Start date: 1.7.2021
ESR Objectives:
The use of mixtures as working fluid of ORC power plants could increase conversion efficiency. Such mixtures would add a degree of flexibility regarding the main operating parameters of the cycle and the non-isothermal phase change in the condenser and evaporator.
This effect would be relevant in geothermal applications and particularly if the plant is air-cooled. However, the practical implications regarding the operation of heat exchangers and turbomachinery have not been studied experimentally and mixture working fluids are not adopted in industrial applications.
The objective of the research is to study mixture cooling using the condenser of the unique ORCHID setup of the TU Delft. In case of positive results, ORC power plants in operation could be charged with a hydrocarbon mixture in place of pentane and the operation and possible efficiency increase assessed.
Research Update
The aim is to use optimization algorithms to select the optimal mixture of fluids of the ORC powerplant for a given application. The current genetic algorithm code was extended to also perform preliminary design of the condenser. This should improve the reliability of the code as it is expected that the use of mixtures will reduce the energy spent to cool the working fluid downstream of the turbine.
Optimization runs with binary and ternary mixtures will now be performed for selected test cases.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovati