Cost Effective Waste Heat Organic Rankine Cycle Applications and Systems Designs

Conceptually, the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power cycle has been well known to the engineering community for many years. Despite the rapid escalation of energy costs during the past decade, and a concerted, though somewhat belated, effort towards industrial energy conservation, very few industrial ORC systems have been installed. The level of technical interest on the part of potential users is high and cannot be blamed for the lack of installations to date. Technical risks are low with systems becoming commercially available. The authors feel the key to increased usage of ORC systems for industrial energy conservation lies in combining cost effective ORC system designs with well selected applications. It is the intent of this paper to provide those within the process industries with an appreciation of the factors considered by ORC systems designers. The paper then attempts to provide a simple framework, admittedly crude, to assist those attempting to identify and rank order potential ORC applications within their process plant or company