The purpose of the work was to experimentally determine the characteristics of the prototype of a Roto-Jet pump (the Pitot tube pump) during its operation under conditions typical for the domestic micro power plant. The low-boiling fluid, sold under the trade name of HFE7100 and characterised by a zero ozone depletion potential (ODP) coefficient, was used as a working medium in the organic Rankine cycle (ORC). An electric thermal oil heater with a maximum power of 2×24 kWe was used as a heat source. The pump of Roto-Jet type was specially designed for the operation with the following rated parameters of the thermodynamic cycle: nominal flow rate of the working fluid 0.17 kg/s, operating pressure 1.2 MPa. The pump was put under load using an expansion valve that simulated the operation of an expansion machine. The article discusses thermodynamic and flow conditions to be met by the pumping engine as well as results of the experimental research. Moreover, the article includes the operational characteristics of the ORC installation and the Roto-Jet pump obtained during the operation with the target working medium – HFE7100. The engineering problems the authors of this article faced when designing and testing the pumping engine prototype are also presented.

The paper deals with pool boiling of water-Al2O3and water-Cu nanofluids on rough and porous coated horizontal tubes. Commercially available stainless steel tubes having 10 mm outside diameter and 0.6 mm wall thickness were used to fabricate the test heater. The tube surface was roughed with emery paper 360 or polished with abrasive compound. Aluminium porous coatings of 0.15 mm thick with porosity of about 40% were produced by plasma spraying. The experiments were conducted under different absolute operating pressures, i.e., 200, 100, and 10 kPa. Nanoparticles were tested at the concentration of 0.01, 0.1, and 1% by weight. Ultrasonic vibration was used in order to stabilize the dispersion of the nanoparticles. It was observed that independent of operating pressure and roughness of the stainless steel tubes addition of even small amount of nanoparticles augments heat transfer in comparison to boiling of distilled water. Contrary to rough tubes boiling heat transfer coefficient of tested nanofluids on porous coated tubes was lower compared to that for distilled water while boiling on porous coated tubes. A correlation equation for prediction of the average heat transfer coefficient during boiling of nanofluids on smooth, rough and porous coated tubes is proposed. The correlation includes all tested variables in dimensionless form and is valid for low heat flux, i.e., below 100 kW/m2.

The paper describes a fuel cell based system and its performance. The system is based on two fuel cell units, DC/DC converter, DC/AC inverter, microprocessor control unit, load unit, bottled hydrogen supply system and a set of measurement instruments. In the study presented in the paper a dynamic response of the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell system to unit step change load as well as to periodical load changing cycles in the form of semi-sinusoidal and trapezoidal signals was investigated. The load was provided with the aid of an in-house-developed electronic load unit, which was fully PC controlled. The apparatus was commissioned by testing the steady-state operation of the module. The obtained efficiency of the fuel cell shows that the test apparatus used in the study provides data in substantial agreement with the manufacturer’s data.