ORC (organic Rankine cycles) are promising systems for conversion of low temperature geothermal energy to electricity. The thermodynamic performance of the ORC with a wet cooling system is analyzed here using hydrocarbon working fluids driven by geothermal water from 100 °C to 150 °C and...

The organic Rankine cycle (ORC) has been widely used to convert low-grade (300°C) thermal energy to electricity. Use of zeotropic mixtures as the working fluids improves the thermodynamic performance of ORC systems due to better matches of the temperature profiles of the working fluid and the...

Firms employing offshore outsourcing strategies may face both exchange rate and demand uncertainties. In this paper, we show that the firms may benefit from operational option to switch production by keeping capacities with both domestic and foreign suppliers. The value of the operational option...

Social security of migrant workers has been significant in dissolving social contradictions and achieving the economic and social development in China during the transitional period. The researches of domestic scholar on social security of migrant workers can be classified into three categories....

In this paper, we present a cut-and-solve (CS) based exact algorithm for the Single Source Capacitated Facility Location Problem (SSCFLP). At each level of CS’s branching tree, it has only two nodes, corresponding to the Sparse Problem (SP) and the Dense Problem (DP), respectively. The SP,...

The cyclic operation of molten-salt thermal energy storage thermoclines for solar thermal power plants is systematically investigated. A comprehensive, two-temperature model is first developed for the cyclic operation of a thermocline operating with a commercially available molten salt as the...

Operation during the charge and discharge cycles of molten-salt thermoclines used for solar thermal energy storage depends strongly on the environmental boundary conditions to which the tanks are exposed. A comprehensive model which accounts for thermal transport in the molten-salt heat transfer...

Thermal ratcheting is a critical phenomenon associated with the cyclic operation of dual-medium thermocline tanks in solar energy applications. Although thermal ratcheting poses a serious impediment to thermocline operation, this failure mode in dual-medium thermocline tanks is not yet well...

This paper proposed a computation program to predict the in-tube thermodynamic performance of the LSC (liquid–vapor separation condenser). The refrigerant circuit of the LSC was then optimized using the Penalty Factor with the predicted results. The proposed program was used to calculate a...