A Review Paper of Solar Organic Rankine Cycle with Suggestion of Methanol Based ORC with Fresnel Type Solar Collector Field

This paper reviews the applicability of Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) using solar irradiation as the primary heat source is done. In present energy crisis condition the world is in dire need of some alternative competitive source to fossil fuels. Many researchers have made different researches to get best results. Renewable energy sources have been a great area of interest for a while; however as these sources are to some extent uncertain and very much dependent on the climate conditions. Non-conventional sources were cultured to get rid of the mentioned problems. ORC is one such system where the thermodynamic Rankine cycle operates with some low critical point thermodynamic fluid other than water which is used in most steam power plant. This cycle was planned for the cases where highest operating temperature would be less than 400 °C or in more precise way the highest temperature ranges from 80 °C to 400 °C. So far this cycle has been used as bottoming cycle where the topping cycle is a conventional gas turbine plant or even a steam power plant. The bottoming cycle ORC generally use low boiling point substances like refrigerants like R254ca or R410a etc., which would produce both power and cooling effect together. Here in this paper a proposal has been made to use ORC, where Methanol would be the thermodynamic fluid and heat would be added from solar irradiation directly.