Zuccato Energia Turboexpander is a new gas expander system for improve the energy efficiency of industrial plants by exploiting the reduction of natural gas pressure from the delivery level to that required by users.

 

 

 

TURBOEXPANDER CONCEPT 

Gas expander work 

 

 

 

 

TURBO EXPANDER DESIGN

 

The Turboexpander installation is installed in parallel to the existing reduction system in order to convert the potential energy of the compressed natural gas into electric energy.

The core of the plant is a high-speed turbogenerator, which comprises a turbine and a generator placed on the same shaft into a hermetic enclosure.

Entire plant – Turboexpander

Turboexpander system of Zuccato Energia is suitable for industries with mass flow of natural gas from 1800 to 21000 Sm3/h and inlet pressure up to 50 bar. The target power range is from 35 to 250 kW.  The power range of turboexpander is depend on the mass flow of natural gas and pressure ratio between inlet and outlet.

 

 

 

 

ADVANTAGES OF TURBOEXPANDER

 

• EASY CUSTOMIZATION

Reduced design expenses as by product of inherent turbine scalability.

• REDUCED ROTATIONAL SPEED

Due to 2-stage turbine, reduced rotational speed and consequently simpler bearings an electric / power electronics systems.

• SIMPLE DESIGN

Reduced capital costs with related economical competitivity. No variable geometry vanes.

• HIGHLY CUSTOMIZED

Maximum power output for each client.

• ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY

Low price and high efficiency brings payback time below 4 years, which is decreased even more if incentives are applied.

 

 

TECHNICAL DATA TURBOEXPANDER

 
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Friday 22nd January 2021- 14:00 GMT

 

Sponsored by Linde Gas, Primetals Technologies, and Zuccato Energia.

‘Sustainability’ is one of the most ubiquitous buzzwords around and it is making a name for itself within steelmaking circles too, as you will discover in this, the eleventh webinar in Steel Times International’s Free Webinar Programme.

 

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Biogas is one of the most used alternative sources for the production of renewable energy and ORC technology can make it even more efficient.

The biogas supply chain uses a low environmental system and is powered by raw materials of local origin. It is characterized by the fact that it exploits the fermentation of animal or vegetable waste substances. This method is particularly used in large farms, where these residues are used to produce energy through a cogeneration unit.

 

To increase the recovery of thermal energy and increase the entire power of the plant, it is possible to install an organic Rankine cycle. Their introduction downstream of the motors, in addition to enhancing the overall electrical efficiency, introduces advantages in terms of reliability, minimum management costs and completely automatic operation, without personnel intervention.

Plant example: ZE-50-ULH module (gensets powered by biogas in Veneto)

 

One of the studies we carried out to insert one of our modules concerns a biogas plant in Argentina. Specifically, it consists of 5 JGS 420s from Jenbacher, each with 1.5 MW of electricity.

The total electricity production required by the plant is 6.8 MW of electricity. Our proposal is to recover the thermal power available to the exhaust fumes of the cogenerators and maximize this waste by feeding our ZE-400-LT module.

Each cogenerator supplies 567 thermal kW from its own exhaust fumes and thus multiplying by the 5 cogenerators at our disposal we obtain 2.835 thermal kW increasing the efficiency of the entire plant by 6,2%.

This solution therefore makes it possible to safeguard environmental sustainability, recovering the waste otherwise emitted into the atmosphere and at the same time increasing the electrical efficiency of the entire plant.

 

Download the case study 

 

The fight against climate change represents today one of the main challenges for society and business. We, therefore, believe that attention to the environment is a founding vision for every activity. We as a company are committed from the outset to eco-sustainability by designing and installing systems for recovery and conversion of otherwise wasted heat. 

 

With ORC technology it is possible to obtain an always clean and constant source of electricity that protects the environment. Furthermore, the accuracy in the smallest design and compositional details allows our machines to be green at every stage of construction and in the exercise of their function. 

 

Zuccato Energia systems have an impeccable eco – friendly component: 

 

 

1. They recover otherwise wasted resources, such as residual heat and processing waste, or simplify the exploitation of renewable solar and geothermal resources. 

 

Our projects are divided according to their purpose: heat recovery from industrial processes or engines and the primary production of electricity from biomass, solar thermodynamic, or geothermal. 

 

 

2. The plants are built with recyclable and eco-sustainable materials. 

 

All plants are built with recyclable and eco-sustainable materials, using a minimum of plastic parts and without using toxic substances in their construction such as stainless steel and carbon steel. 

 

 

3. Use of water as a thermal transfer fluid. 

 

The carrier fluid is the liquid used to convey heat from the source to the ORC module, where that heat is used to evaporate the working fluid. We have chosen to use plain water as a carrier fluid instead of the diathermic oil used elsewhere, slightly more efficient in the thermal transfer but much more dangerous as it is flammable and highly polluting in the event of leaks. The carrier fluid is therefore very normal hot water at 94 °C. 

 

 

4. Environmentally friendly working fluid. 

 

The special working fluid used is a special azeotropic mixture of environmentally friendly hydrofluorocarbons and is the key component of Zuccato Energia plants. This fluid has excellent characteristics: 

 

• Wide working range that allows exploiting sources previously considered unusable; 

• Completely “ozone-friendly”, organic, and non-toxic, for full eco-compatibility and greater safety (accidental leaks are not harmful). 

 

Also, thanks to the closed-cycle operation of this fluid, there is no water or steam consumption and the system is, therefore, economical to manage as well as simpler and more compact.

Waste heat recovery in the glass industry with zero emission investment.

 

Transforming the heat dissipated by glass processing furnaces and converting it into clean electricity has significant advantages: the sustainable commitment taken as a corporate vision and the coverage of the plant’s self-consumption, which can be reinvested in the company’s core business.

 

These are the objectives of Vetreria di Borgonovo, a company in the Piacenza area that produces 100% Made in Italy quality design specializing in a wide range of household items. The company employs two modern melting furnaces that produce approximately 150 tons of quarried glass per day and has chosen our ORC systems to meet its needs.

Vetreria di Borgonovo – Piacenza

 

Thanks to our technology with excellent efficiency and flexibility of operation, adapting to the upstream load, and to our constant growth and improvement of the machines, we have created a customized system.

We told about the project to Close-Up-Engineering, a reference point for news on Engineering, Technology, Science, Business, Economy and Finance.

 

Find out more

 

For more technical details.

Energy is an increasingly indispensable and expensive resource and improvements in energy efficiency become increasingly fundamental and strategic for companies, which find potential savings in the recovery of heat from their industrial processes, and its conversion into electric energy.

Zuccato Energia ORC systems can be used precisely for this purpose: recover energy from most industrial processes involving heat and convert it into clean electricity. Among the sectors that can benefit greatly from this, we certainly find the metallurgical industry.

One of the studies we carried out to evaluate the application of one of our ORC modules concerns a rolling mill, which uses an industrial machine for hot or cold rolling and / or shaping of malleable materials in its production process. This company has a longitudinal member furnace, used for heating slabs, billets or bars before rolling. The object to be heated is passed through the oven where temperatures normally reach up to 1200 ° C.

Rolling mill

The fumes produced by the normal activity of the furnace have an important thermal potential, which can be exploited through the ORC technology which transforms the recovered thermal power into electrical power that can be used to cover the self-consumption of the plant.

The recovery of hot fumes is in particular achieved through a heat exchanger that transfers the thermal power possessed by the fumes to clean water, the carrier fluid used for all Zuccato Energia ORC systems. Our choice to use water as a carrier fluid is dictated by the fact that it is a known fluid, easily available, which does not require special management and maintenance works, which does not present a high cost and above all which is safe for the environment.
The hot fumes are first of all made to flow into a fumes treatment system and only subsequently into the heat exchanger, to extract the thermal power contained in them and exploit it to make pressurized water at 160 ° C available to power the ORC module.

The ORC module selected for this installation is the ZE-500-LT module which can produce up to 561 kW of electricity, recovering a thermal power of 3 500 thermal kW, which translates into an electrical efficiency of 16%.

Thanks to the use of an ORC module inside the rolling mill, the thermal energy otherwise wasted as it is released into the environment can be used to produce electricity.
This reduces the heating that would affect globally, also reducing the use of electricity produced from fossil sources, enhancing the energy inside the plant and increasing the overall efficiency of the entire plant.