Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
4915933 | Applied Energy | 2017 | 11 Pages |
Abstract
Energy challenge is becoming more and more serious. Improving energy utilization efficiency seems to be a feasible way to tackle energy problems. A large amount of waste heat is discharged in chemical process industry. It is reported that in a coal chemical process waste heat accounts for 17-67% fuel consumption, of which 60% can be recyclable in theory. Waste heat recovery is a reliable and reasonable way for efficiency improvement. However, the low grade waste heat is difficult to be utilized. Thermodynamic cycles such as organic Rankine cycles (ORC), absorption chillers, absorption heat pumps, absorption heat transformers, and mechanical heat pumps are able to utilize wasted thermal energy for the generation of electrical power, chilling and heat at a higher temperature. In this paper, absorption heat transformer (AHT) is studied and novel cascade absorption transformer (NCAHT) is proposed to recover low grade waste heat. The NCAHT is testified in a coal to synthetic natural gas plant. Results show that the total capital investment of a 12Â MW NCAHT is 924,000Â USD. Financial Internal Rate of Return (FIRR) is used as an economic evaluation index. The FIRR is 62.16% and the payback time is 0.77Â years. When the steam price reduced to 9 USD or the cooling water price higher than 0.96, the FIRR will be less than 30%.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Energy
Energy Engineering and Power Technology
Authors
Sheng Yang, Yu Qian, Yifan Wang, Siyu Yang,