A power dispatch model for a ferrochrome plant heat recovery cogeneration system

A Organic Rankine Cycle waste heat recovery cogeneration system for heat recovery and power generation to relieve grid pressure and save energy cost for a ferrochrome smelting plant is investigated. Through the recovery and utilization of previously wasted heat from the facility's internal smelting process off-gases, the cogeneration system is introduced to generate electrical power to supply the on-site electricity demand and feed electricity back to the utility grid when it is necessary and beneficial to do so. In addition, the cogeneration system generates cooling power through a lithium bromide-water solution absorption refrigeration cycle to meet the cooling requirements of the plant. The heat recovery process for power generation is modeled and the optimal power dispatching between the on-site loads and the utility grid is formulated as an economic power dispatching (EPD) problem, which aims to maximize the plant's economic benefits by means of minimizing the cost of purchasing electricity from the utility and maximizing revenue from selling the generated electricity to the grid. Application of the developed model to a ferrochrome smelting plant in South Africa is presented as a case study. It is found that, for the studied case, more than $1,290,000 annual savings can be obtained as a result of the proposed heat recovery power generation system and the associated EPD model. In addition to this, more than $920,000 annual savings is obtained as a result of the generated cooling power via the proposed absorption refrigeration system. The combined cogeneration system is able to generate up to 4.4 MW electrical power and 11.3 MW cooling power from the recovered thermal energy that was previously wasted.