Power System Equipment Module Test Project

The technology of electric power generation when applying the binary process to hydrothermal resources had not yet been demonstrated in the United States. Accordingly, on November 10, 1977, the Electric Power Research Institute and the Department of Energy, acting through the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, agreed to cofund the Power System Equipment Module Test Project. The Power System Equipment Module Test Project consisted of a field test program to accomplish the objectives listed below while heating hydrocarbon fluids to above their critical points, expanding these fluids, and subsequently, condensing them below their critical points: (1) Verify the performance of state-of-the-art heat exchangers in geothermal service; (2) Verify the heat exchangers' performance heating either selected pure light hydrocarbons or selected mixtures of light hydrocarbons in the vicinity of their respective critical pressures and temperatures; (3) Establish overall heat transfer coefficients that might be used for design of commercial-size geothermal power plants using the same geothermal brine and light hydrocarbon working fluids; (4) Perform and investigate the above under representative fluid operating conditions during which the production wells would be pumped. The project was accomplished by diverting approximately 200 gpm of the flow from one of Magma Power Company's geothermal wells in the East Mesa Geothermal Field. After the heat was removed from the geothermal brine flow, the cooled flow was returned to Magma Power Company and recombined with the main brine stream for disposal by reinjection. Approximately five thermal megawatts was transferred from geothermal brine to hydrocarbon working fluids in a closed system. This heat was removed from the working fluids in a condenser and subsequently rejected to the environment by a wet cooling tower. The thermodynamic performance of both the working fluids and the system components was measured during the test program to achieve the project's objectives