CARILEC (Caribbean Electric Utility Services Corporation) allowed us to explain how our ORC modules are efficient for recovering the waste heat produced by the diesel and biogas engines.
This solution can offer clean electricity and the achievement of the environmental sustainability core business.
We are pleased to announce the start-up of our ORC system for an glass industrial process.
The Vetreria di Borgonovo glasswork in Piacenza, Italy. The factory, which covers 52.000m2, produces about 45.000 tonnes of glass per year using two modern melting furnaces.
The system realized involves the operation of an ZE-200-LT ORC module produces up to 200 kW of electricity, recovering 1400 kWt from the furnace’s fumes. The module recovers the waste heat and through a closed process produces clean electricity to use in the overall plant. The recovery is carried out employing a heat exchanger which intercepts the flue gases from the furnaces and uses them to heat some water, the vector fluid necessary for the operation of the ORC system.
The electricity production is zero emissions: the glasswork can avoid 274 TOE and 376 tonnes of CO2 per year.
ORC Plant – Vetreria di Borgonovo Spa
Container top view – Vetreria di Borgonovo Spa
Waste heat recovery through ORC technology becomes the means to achieve the goal of “environmental sustainability”: recovering heat at medium and low temperatures indeed, allows to reduce the environmental impact of industrial processes and at the same time to reduce their economic impact allowing them to exploit their waste and to convert them into electricity, with high flexibility, minimal maintenance requirements and with custom made components.
Energy recovery takes place from the recovery of the exhaust fumes of incinerators or engines powered by the biogas produced by the waste itself.
One of our ORC systems has found application in a waste management plant and uses the waste gases of the incinerator.
An incinerator is a waste disposal facility that works by destroying inert materials. In practice, the waste is burned or, as the word itself suggests, “incinerated”. The fumes deriving from combustion must be adequately monitored and filtered and can be used precisely in the Organic Rankine Cycle.
The heat recovered from the incineration processes is converted and used to generate electricity.
Our ZE-200-LT ORC system is applied by recovering 2000 kW of thermal power. In this way, the waste treatment plant manages to dispose of its waste and at the same time produce clean electricity without CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
Maksim Smirnov, Natalia Kuklina, Aleksandr Sebelev, Alessandro Zuccato and Nikolay Zabelin
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU), St. Petersburg, Russia
Zuccato Energia Srl, via della Consortia 2, Verona, Italy
*Corresponding Author: m.smirnov.turbo@gmail.com
This paper seeks to compare four solutions for an ORC power plant rated at 250 kW running with R1233zdE as the working fluid: a radial inflow – axial outflow turbine with a typical reaction about of 0.5, a radial centripetal turbines with reaction of 0.36 and 0.05 and an impulse centrifugal turbine. All these turbines are single stage and high-speed. Steady state CFD simulations were carried out to assess the performance at the design and partial load as well as the axial force values.
As expected, the radial inflow turbine has exhibited the best performance, followed then by the centripetal reaction turbine with 4% of a relative efficiency decrease. Both impulse turbines have shown 11% less efficiency at the design point comparing to the radial inflow stage. Under the partial load, the turbines have exhibited different trends of their efficiency behaviour.
In particular, with a power output reduction from 100 to 40%, the radial inflow and the centripetal turbine have lost 7% of their efficiency, while the centripetal impulse turbine 20% and the centrifugal impulse just 5%.
The axial force of the radial inflow and both centripetal stages may be balanced to reach a desired value by means of the modification of the disk back seal. Instead, the centrifugal impulse stage fails to provide such a balancing, which results in high values of the axial thrust even despite an impulse nature of this stage.
