Increasing the efficiency of Organic Rankine Cycle Technology by means of Multivariable Predictive Control

The Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) technology has become very popular, as it is extremely suitable for waste heat recovery from low-grade heat sources. As the ORC system is a strongly coupled nonlinear multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) process, conventional control strategies (e.g. PID) may not achieve satisfactory results. In this contribution our focus
is on the accurate regulation of the superheating, in order to increase the e fficiency of the cycle and to avoid the formation of liquid droplets that could damage the expander. To this end, a multivariable Model Predictive Control (MPC) strategy is proposed, its performance is compared to the one of PI controllers for the case of variable waste-heat source profi les.