Thu, 30 September, 2021
Innovations to optimise geothermal utilisation and economics
Talk: Enhancement of heat exchanger performance through the utilisation of coatings!
Speaker: Imran Bhamji, TWI.
Low temperature geothermal resources are abundant in many regions world-wide and hold a large amount of thermal energy that can be utilised directly for district heating. These can also be utilised for electricity generation through Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power plants. The ORC utilises an organic, usually high molecular weight, working fluid with a much lower boiling point than water, which is vaporised using the heat from the geothermal resource, in the process developing sufficient pressure to drive a turbine. Once past the turbine, the working fluid is cooled to a liquid state in a condenser before the cycle repeats. Heat exchangers in ORC plants, including preheaters, evaporators, superheaters and condensers account for a significant proportion of the plant total capital costs, and therefore reductions in cost related to these components will have a huge impact on plant profitability and could potentially mean that unviable resources become viable.
The GeoHex project considers the feasibility of applying coatings onto heat exchanger components to enhance corrosion, scaling and heat transfer performance. This presentation will present recent research related to the project.
To register: Click here
