VOL. 10, NO. 9, MAY 2015 ISSN 1819-6608 ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences © 2006-2015 Asian Research Publishing Network (ARPN). All rights reserved. www.arpnjournals.com 3987 EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON POWER GENERATION USING BIOMASS BASED AND SOLAR BASED BRAYTON CYCLES Kalidasan B. 1 , T. Srinivas 2 and Shankar R. 2 1 Technology in Energy & Environmental Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India 2 School of Mechanical and Building Science, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India E-Mail: kalidasancinna@gmail.com ABSTRACT Electric power is one among the basic need in day to day life of human being. Electric power generation using conventional source of energy leads to environmental degradation and pollution. In the present work experimental comparison between power generations using solar based Brayton cycle and biomass based Brayton cycle. Brayton cycle is one which uses hot compressed air to generated power by expanding it in a turbine. In this work compressed air is varied at a flow rate of 20-50 , and heating is carried out using solar scheffler reflector and biomass. Keyword: solar, biomass, compressed air, scheffler reflector, radial turbine. 1. INTRODUCTION Current industrial society all over the world depends on conventional source of energy like coal, natural gas, oil and uranium. This leads to a wide environmental problem such as pollutions, global warming, deforestation etc. In order to reduce these harmful effects the conventional sources should be replaced by non conventional, renewable source of energy such as solar, wind & tidal etc. In the present work an experimental comparison is made between solar and coal based energy source in power generation. Brayton cycle is the basic of this experimental comparison, atmospheric air is compressed in compressor; air is heated using solar scheffler reflector which forms the renewable source of Brayton cycle. In the later air is heated using coal which is a biomass based non renewable source of Brayton cycle. The hot air is expanded in a radial turbine which is coupled to generator to generate power. Many works has been carried out in the field of solar energy for power generation, and few important works are highlighted. Sambeet Mishra and Pratyasha Tripathy [1] highlighted the major types of solar thermal system to generate electricity which include Parabolic Trough Solar Electric Generating System, Central Receiver power plant, Dish sterling system, Solar chimney power plant and Solar pond power plant. In all these power the solar radiation is concentrated on the liquid pipe line which generates steam which is expanded in a turbine for electricity generation. Valerio Marinelli et al [2] later made a improvement model in which the effect of the incident angle modifier was included and the effect of the reheating of the fluid was worked and concluded that the constant flow with variable inlet temperature with reheating showed better efficiency due to addition of the input heat source with reheating. Werner Platzer [3] investigated a combined PV- enhanced solar thermal power plant for reducing the cost of power produced. Solar electricity generation using concentrating solar thermal collector faces the challenge of strongly decreased levelized electricity costs by photovoltaic power plant. Adopting this method of photovoltaic generation and solar thermal power generation via thermal energy storage produced high annual capacity factor above 50% due to dispatchable solar power from thermal storage. Omar Z. Sharaf, Mehmet F. Orhan [4] has carried a study on concentrated photovoltaic thermal solar collectors. They studied the characteristics, design, principal and technological advances in solar component and elaborated the power generation process using concentrated photovoltaic thermal solar collector. Emilie Sauret and Yuantong Gu [5] presented a complete numerical simulation of a high density working fluid which could be expanded in a inward radial flow turbine at geothermal condition with 400 kW energy generation. This led to the optimization of organic Rankine cycle which has a major role in determining the competitiveness of low to moderate renewable sources. The nominal condition is well suited to handle variations of rotational speed, inlet temperature and pressure ratio while maintaining a relative efficiency. Pia Piroschka Otte [6] has made a cultural study for cooking using solar energy in Burkina Faso and India, and depicted the use of Solar Scheffler Reflector which performed economically for cooking purpose. Even today many bakeries, hotel adopts cooking by use of Solar Scheffler Reflector. Emilie Sauret and Yuantong Gu [7] presented a complete numerical simulation of a high density working fluid which could be expanded in a inward radial flow turbine at geothermal condition with 400 kW energy generation. This led to the optimization of organic Rankine cycle which has a major role in determining the competitiveness of low to moderate renewable sources. Three dimensional viscous simulations were presented and discussed at the nominal and off design condition. The nominal condition is well suited to handle variations of rotational speed, inlet temperature and pressure ratio while maintaining a relative efficiency. Solar Scheffler Reflector is not used for compressed air heating and power generation. Thus this paper focuses on non conventional source of energy conversion using Solar Scheffler Reflector.