Design of an indirectly fired gas turbine integrated with an organic rankine cycle unit for combined heat and power production

In the last years, the European countries have paid increasing attention to renewable sources and greenhouse emissions. The Council of the European Union and the European Parliament have established ambitious targets for the next years. In this scenario, biomass plays a prominent role since its life cycle produces a zero net carbon dioxide emission. Additionally, biomass can ensure plant operation continuity thanks to its availability and storage ability. Several conventional systems running on biomass are available at the moment. Most of them are performant either in the large-scale or in the small power range. The absence of an efficient system on the small-middle scale inspired this thesis project. The object is an innovative plant based on a wet indirectly fired gas turbine (WIFGT) integrated with an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) unit for combined heat and power production. The WIFGT is a performant system in the small-middle power range; the ORC cycle is capable of giving value to low-temperature heat sources. Their integration is investigated in this thesis with the aim of carrying out a preliminary design of the components. The targeted plant output is around 200 kW in order not to need a wide cultivation area and to avoid biomass shipping. Existing in-house simulation tools are used: They are adapted to this purpose. Firstly the WIFGT + ORC model is built; Zero-dimensional models of heat exchangers, compressor, turbines, furnace, dryer and pump are used. Different fluids are selected but toluene and benzene turn out to be the most suitable. In the indirectly fired gas turbine a pressure ratio around 4 leads to the highest efficiency. From the thermodynamic analysis the system shows an electric efficiency of 38%, outdoing other conventional plants in the same power range. The combined plant is designed to recover thermal energy: Water is used as coolant in the condenser. It is heated from 60°C up to 90°C, ensuring the possibility of space heating. Mono-dimensional models are used to design the heat exchange equipment. Different types of heat exchangers are chosen depending on the working temperature. A finned-plate heat exchanger is selected for the WIFGT heat transfer equipment due to the high temperature, oxidizing and corrosive environment. A once-through boiler with finned tubes is chosen to vaporize the organic fluid in the ORC. A plate heat exchanger is chosen for the condenser and recuperator. A quasi-monodimensional model for single-stage axial turbine is implemented to design both the WIFGT and the ORC turbine. The system simulation after the components design shows an electric efficiency around 34% with a decrease by 10% compared to the zero-dimensional analysis. The work exhibits the system potentiality compared to the existing plants from both technical and economic point of view.

Quantum solitons in the XXZ model with staggered external magnetic field

The 1-D 1/2-spin XXZ model with staggered external magnetic field, when restricting to low field, can be mapped into the quantum sine-Gordon model through bosonization: this assures the presence of soliton, antisoliton and breather excitations in it. In particular, the action of the staggered field opens a gap so that these physical objects are stable against energetic fluctuations. In the present work, this model is studied both analytically and numerically. On the one hand, analytical calculations are made to solve exactly the model through Bethe ansatz: the solution for the XX + h staggered model is found first by means of Jordan-Wigner transformation and then through Bethe ansatz; after this stage, efforts are made to extend the latter approach to the XXZ + h staggered model (without finding its exact solution). On the other hand, the energies of the elementary soliton excitations are pinpointed through static DMRG (Density Matrix Renormalization Group) for different values of the parameters in the hamiltonian. Breathers are found to be in the antiferromagnetic region only, while solitons and antisolitons are present both in the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic region. Their single-site z-magnetization expectation values are also computed to see how they appear in real space, and time-dependent DMRG is employed to realize quenches on the hamiltonian parameters to monitor their time-evolution. The results obtained reveal the quantum nature of these objects and provide some information about their features. Further studies and a better understanding of their properties could bring to the realization of a two-level state through a soliton-antisoliton pair, in order to implement a qubit.