Integrated Steam/Organic Rankine Cycle (ISORC) for Waste Heat Recovery in Distributed Generation and Combined Heat and Power Production

Energy efficiency improvement and waste heat utilization in power generation and energy intensive industrial applications are in the main focus of the researchers and engineers nowadays. A great deal of experience was gained by the industrial leaders such as ORMAT, Siemens, Caterpillar, Turboden, and others. However, the commercially and semi-commercially available systems for waste heat utilization have certain restrictions that limit the utilization cycle efficiency to approximately 18%. The paper presents an innovative concept of waste heat utilization system that allows reaching the utilization cycle efficiency up to 28–30% employing low-boiling media such as butane, propane, pentane and others. Applying such a concept to Distributed Generation systems the overall energy efficiency could be boost up to 58–60% and further up to 90% in case of CHP production.