Research Projects

The recovery of waste heat is crucial for India, as it is expected to meet 1508 MToe of energy demands by 2030 and reduce fossil fuel reserves. The Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is a proven technology for waste heat recovery, but it has not significantly impacted developing nations like India due to high capital-intensive infrastructure costs and lack of indigenous technologies. Preliminary calculations suggest that replacing the conventional expander in an ORC loop with a Tesla turbine could reduce the total cost of a 200KW ORC plant by 45%. The Tesla turbine, conceived by Nikola Tesla, uses friction to transfer momentum from the working fluid to its blades, offering comparable efficiency to other micro-turbines. It has a simple and reliable construction, low production, maintenance cost, and reduced vibration. The objective is to incorporate and optimize a working Tesla turbine as a subsystem of an ORC unit at the laboratory scale for the development of this disruptive technology. The approach involves numerical simulations, experiments on the Tesla turbine in a stand-alone setup, and experiments on the Tesla turbine integrated into an ORC loop to collect performance data. A prototype has been developed, achieving a rotational speed of approximately 30000 RPM at a pressure ratio of 10 under no-load conditions. Industry support letters have also been included to demonstrate the existing market and the strong need for indigenous ORC technology development at a low cost.