Experiments on supersonic ORC nozzles in linear cascade configuration

In organic Rankine cycle (ORC) power plants, the turbo-expander represents a critical component due to the major impact of its efficiency on system layout and overall plant performance and profitability. Also, its design is complicated by large expansion ratios, by the demand of operational flexibility and by the thermo-physical characteristics of the working fluid and non-ideal gas effects. This typically leads to turbines with low number of stages and transonic/supersonic flow regimes. The ORC turbine design relies on advanced aerodynamic models and high-fidelity tools based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The verification of high-fidelity tools is grounded in accurate fluid thermodynamic models and experimental data concerning canonical flows, since experiments on non-ideal flows within ORC turbine cascades are still missing in the literature. To fill this gap, a novel experiment has been designed at Politecnico di Milano involving an ORC supersonic linear cascade, aimed at characterizing the flow field within the bladed and semi-bladed portion of the channels, at the trailing edge where shock/fan systems arise, and downstream the cascade, by retrieving the pitch-wise total pressure loss distribution. This paper reports the outcomes of an experimental campaign focused on the expansion of hexamethyldisiloxane (MM) within the cascade. Initial commissioning tests were performed using nitrogen at different pressure levels. Finally, the experimental data gathered during a campaign carried out with MM in non-ideal conditions are presented and compared with CFD simulations results, allowing to assess non-ideal gas effects on the trailing edge shock pattern and pressure distribution through the cascade.