Analysis of pressure drop in T-junction and its effect on thermodynamic cycle efficiency

Highlights: • The local pressure drop between inlet and branch tube in T-junctions is clarified. • Parametric studies on the local pressure drop coefficients are carried out with small diameter. • This paper obtains the effects of the T-junction separator on thermodynamic cycle efficiency. The application of T-junction has already been extended from the petroleum engineering to the emerging advanced thermodynamic cycles. How a T-junction, as a separator in an emerging thermodynamic cycle, affects the cycle efficiency is discussed in this paper. Firstly, based on the Eulerian method, parametric studies on the local pressure drop coefficients are conducted and two new local pressure drop (LPD) coefficients are predicted in this paper. Then, the effects of pressure drop on a composition adjustable organic Rankine cycle efficiency is analyzed. In the process, a composition adjustable organic Rankine cycle with zeotropic mixtures R245fa/R123 is chosen to calculate the effects of pressure drop on thermodynamic cycle efficiency. The quality of the outlet of the evaporator is assumed as 0.7, and the composition ratio as 0.6/0.4. The results show that the pressure variation of T-junction affects the adjustable organic Rankine cycle efficiency, and reasonable phase separation ratio can improve the thermodynamic cycle efficiency. The pressure drop could cause composition diffusion. In addition, two new local pressure drop coefficients are obtained. And the results demonstrate that K_12J declines slowly with the increases of density ratio (ρ₂/ρ₁) and decreases with the increases of mass fraction of taken off (F). K_13J shows an obvious trend with diameter ratio (d₃/d₁) and F. This work could push the research of T-junction as a separator in the adjustable organic Rankine cycle.