Thermafficient™ Technology

The foundation of Thermafficient™ is the Supercritical Carbon Dioxide “CO2″ Champagne Heat pump patent, originally developed by NASA. This heat pump was designed for the cooling of spacecraft. reXorce has extended the core technology with further IP, to create a power generating cycle that concurrently provides cooling and heating as a free byproduct. reXorce’s solution is an innovative version of the Rankine cycle based on a binary mixture of a liquid absorbent and supercritical carbon dioxide. Binary fluids have superior efficiency based on thermodynamic fundamentals in part attributed to a variable boiling point temperature whereas single-component fluids have a constant boiling point temperature. The result is the ability to recuperate (i.e., internal waste heat recovery) more thermal energy to maximize the overall thermodynamic cycle efficiency and transform thermal energy into high value electricity and cooling from lower temperature sources. The supercritical CO2 drives an expansion device, such as a turbine, from the significant pressures created transforming the thermal energy into mechanical/electrical energy. The unique ability of the binary fluid to absorb CO2 enables the fluid to be pumped as a liquid to high pressure using less energy as compared to pumping a gas. Supercritical CO2, defined as the highest temperature and pressure at which CO2 exists as a gas and liquid in equilibrium, has a large heat capacity which enables a smaller expansion device. The combination of supercritical CO2 and binary fluids generates significant pressures from very small volumes of working fluids. The system is projected to create a 1 MW “turbine” that flows less than one gallon of fluid per second. As a result, capital costs are projected to be competitive on a $ per kW basis with conventional energy production technologies.The Thermafficient™ system is made up of five core components, (i) heat exchangers, (ii) working fluids, (iii) pumps, (iv) expansion device and (v) a generator, allowing it to uniquely produce power from a wide range of thermal sources. The net result is a theoretical increase in power generating efficiency ranging from an incremental 20% to 35% depending on the quality of the thermal source. Thermafficient™ produces high pressures (enabling power to be extracted) at lower temperatures (increases operating range) to yield higher efficiencies. We are not aware of another system that is able to efficiently and concurrently produce power, cooling and heating from temperature heat sources as low as 220-250° F.