Experimental investigations of the revolving vane (RV-I) expander

A novel revolving vane (RV-I) expander prototype, where the vane is rigidly attached to the rotor and the cylinder is allowed to move together with the rotor, has been built and studied experimentally. The prototype is found to operate successfully in the range of operating conditions tested: speed of up to 600 rpm and suction pressure of up to 5 barg. At the designed suction pressure of 3 barg, the isentropic and volumetric efficiency of the prototype is found to be up to 32% and 25% respectively. The data are found to be in good agreement with the theoretical predictions with standard deviations of less than 10% for most of the average torque and flow rate data points. The theoretical model is also found to be able to accurately predict the instantaneous torque of the expander. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.