An electricity supply system by recovering the waste heat of commercial aeroengine

Rapid development of the aviation industry has brought great convenience to people's travel and goods transportation. The inevitable issues are high level of energy consumption and the huge environment pollution by kerosene combustion. On the other hand, there is a greater requirement for the electricity capacity as well as the power ratings of aircraft generators to meet the continuous intensification of the electrification degree in modern aircraft. The question that is tried to identify in this paper is: can the waste heat in the aircraft be collected to generate power for meeting the electricity demand? In this paper, an electricity supply system driven by the heat collected from the commercial aeroengine wall is first proposed. It is an integrated system by coupling the topping gas turbine with bottomed closed Brayton cycle via the liquid sodium. A comprehensive mathematical model is developed for the system in the aspects of thermodynamics and economics. The analysis results demonstrate that the proposed system is capable of satisfying the megawatt-scale power requirements of commercial aeroengine. The fluid He–Xe (40 g/mol) is a better choice to cycle the given power system than He and air considering its larger net power output, lower compression ratio and smaller component size. The system with He–Xe can supply 1299 kW electricity power when the compression ratio is just about 7.1. In that case, the oil cost savings is about 3.66 percentages lower than that of the original oil consumption. •Novel electricity system is given by using waste heat of commercial aeroengine.•Effects of different working fluids and operation parameters are examined.•He–Xe (40 g/mol) is recommended as the system working fluid than air and He.•The compression ratio is suggested at 7.1with an operation pressure of 3.55 MPa.•Oil cost savings is about 3.66% lower than that of original oil consumption.