One of the less known technologies that comes into focus now and uses was heat is the technology of ORC units and absorption refrigerators. ORC units are low-temperature sys-tems of heat-to-electricity conversion, i.e. the technology using waste heat sources for the generation of electricity by the transfer into the working medium of the
Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC)
.
The ORC machines use various source of waste “useless” heat for the generation of electric-ity, where:
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they have no requirements for fuel – they use waste heat,
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they have no emissions, are environmentally friendly and they produce no carbon diox-ide,
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their operating costs are low,
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their payback period is attractive,
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their design lifetime is 20 years, and
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their marketability is possible also in other branches – not only in wastewater treat-ment plants and in biogas stations.
Another sphere of potential savings of a growing importance is the sphere of cooling. Today, new and modernised technologies are turning away from conventional compression refrig-erators and tend to the absorption refrigeration technology.
The conventional compression refrigerators are electrically driven.
The absorption refrigerators use, as the main source of energy, hot water, steam, exhaust gases, waste gas or waste heat as such. Combinations of two sources are also possible.
The absorption refrigerators use for their operation only 5 % of electricity in a comparison with the conventional ones – the compression refrigerators – because only circulation pumps are electrically driven. Their lifetime is much longer (up to 20 years) and their noisiness is substantially lower.
There is a wide range of method how to use this “waste” energy: but always it is necessary to prepare a complex process analysis, evaluate the investor's needs and requirements and propose an ideal energy-exploitation solution, which – employing suitable process elements – would create conditions for the maximisation of heat gains and their reverse use in the processes at optimised capital costs.
Our solutions consist in increasing of energy efficiencies of individual applications of the technologies supplied by us with the top efficiency and very short payback period.