Dynamic Modeling of Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) System for Fault Diagnosis and Control System Design

Abstract

Dynamic simulation plays an important role of providing a higher-level of process analysis of the system and supporting system configuration, operation, maintenance, diagnosis and design of the control system. The purpose of this research is to develop a virtual simulation tool for current suite of geothermal power plants. This article provides a numerical modeling framework for the dynamic modeling including detailed component models and a generic dynamic feedback control and fault diagnosis model for an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) system. A moving boundary method with switched system model is used to model time-varying performance of a heat exchanger in various flow conditions. A custom library for models of ORC components and system dynamic models has been built in Matlab/Simulink environment. The developed model is capable of designing a component- and system level control strategy and fault diagnosis system.