Turboden, a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries company, is a global leader in the design, manufacture and after-sales service of Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) turbogenerators, which harness heat to generate useful power from renewable sources and waste heat, suitable for distributed and own power generation.
ORC technology can be efficiently applied to different fields of application:
– Exploitation of biomass, where cogeneration ORC plants produce heat and electric power from biomass with high efficiency and user-friendly operation;
– Cogeneration (medium-pressure steam and power production) for industrial processes;
– Geothermal sources, where ORC technology is particularly suitable for the exploitation of medium-to-low-enthalpy sources;
– Heat recovery from energy-intensive industries (cement, glass, steel, other ferrous and non-ferrous metals) and from Oil&Gas processes, with the ORC being a technology easy to integrate – even with inconstant heat sources – and completely automated, leaving the industrial user focused on its own production process;
– Combined cycles with reciprocating engines and gas turbines, minimizing the fuel consumption without adding complexity to the system;
– Waste to energy applications from waste incinerators (including sludge incineration);
– Solar thermal power applications, where Turboden units allow to convert the heat collected by solar collectors into electricity through an efficient thermodynamic cycle.
In the Oil&Gas industry, ORC breakthrough technology can be used in gas compressor stations to recover heat from open-cycle gas turbines as well in refineries where high temperature processes need to dissipate considerable amounts of thermal power. The implementation of ORC-based heat recovery system would help to increase the efficiency of up, mid and downstream facilities, exploiting waste heat to generate electric or mechanical power.
The ORC system utilizes a high-molecular-mass organic fluid, resulting in excellent electric performance and several key advantages.
The main technical advantages of an ORC cycle are:
– low mechanical stress of the turbine due to the low peripheral speed;
– low RPM of the turbine allowing the direct drive of the electric generator without reduction gear;
– no erosion of blades, thanks to the absence of moisture in the vapor nozzles;
– high cycle efficiency;
– very high turbine efficiency;
– no water consumed.
The system offers also operational advantages:
– simple start-stop procedures;
– automatic and continuous operation;
– partial load operation down to 10% of nominal power;
– high efficiency even at partial load;
– no operator attendance needed;
– quiet operation;
– high availability (98% on a statistic base);
– low O&M cost;
– long life.
With more than 335 plants in 36 countries, Turboden fleet, that ranges from 200 kW up to 20 MWe, produced more than 11,000 GWh and reached more than 8 million working hours.
