Waste Heat Recovery

In the last years, the high prices of energy and the need to reduce CO2 emissions increased the importance of heat recovery applications for industrial processes. Our ORC technology, highly reliable and safe, is particularly suitable for heat recovery applications. It allows to transform the recovered heat into electricity, which, unlike heat, is always useful.

Advantages of ORC in Heat Recovery Applications

Compared to other competing technologies (i.e. steam turbines), the main advantages obtained from the ORC technology are the following :

high cycle efficiency (especially if used in cogeneration plants);
very high turbine efficiency (up to 90%);
low mechanical stress of the turbine, thanks to the low peripheral speed;
low RPM of the turbine allowing the direct drive of the electric generator without reduction gear;
no erosion of the turbine blades, thanks to the absence of moisture in the vapour nozzles;
very long operational life of the machine due to the characteristics of the working fluid that, unlike steam, is non eroding and non corroding for valve seats, tubing and turbine blades;
no water treatment system as in steam plants is necessary.

There are also other relevant advantages, such as simple start-stop procedures, quiet operation, minimum maintenance requirements and good partial load performance

Our Experience

In 1996 Turboden realized its first heat recovery plant in an iron foundry in Brescia. Later, Turboden has been involved in ORC turbogenerators projects for different industrial processes, including multinational companies such as RHI and Italcementi. You can find a detailed list of our heat recovery units in the References section.

Is it suitable for you?

Typical industrial applications are found in the following areas:

Cement industry;
Glass industry;
Steel industry;
Non ferrous furnaces;
Refineries.

Generally, the turbogenerators for heat recovery applications have a power ranging from 500 kWel to 5 MWel; for this group of plants, Turboden, if required, can act as Main Contractor, supplying also complementary items for the ORC plants. You can see our standard products for heat recovery in the Products section.

Small Combined Cycles

Internal combustion engines are another interesting source for heat recovery. The addition of an ORC to recover the energy of downstream exhaust gas of a gas turbine is a way to obtain an efficient and reliable Combined Cycle system at small scale. The same result can be obtained with a reciprocating engine + ORC (either with a Diesel or a gas engine). In that case the ORC added power is indicatively 8 to 12% of the primary engine (turbine or motor). The fuel for the combined cycle can be fossil fuel (mainly natural gas), vegetable oil, biogas or syngas. In addition, the ORC turbo-generator can be vertically integrated as downstream component to engines fuelled by medium-large size gasifiers, thus increasing the overall efficiency of the plant.

Bio-Fuels

The production of electric energy from vegetable oil and biodiesel, benefits from renewable energy incentives (in Italy, for instance, there are Green Certificate incentives) and the profitability of the investment is highly appealing for investors. The spreading of new energy crops (i.e. jatropha) which seems to give excellent yields also in dry land areas should give a further boost to the projects of electric energy production from biofuels and reduces the utilization of oils used by the food industry. Moreover, biogas-fuelled internal-combustion engines are widely used in agriculture and farms. They range from 200kWel to 2MWel and are fuelled by urban landfill gas or biogas from digestors.

TURBODEN clean energy ahead