Energetic and economic investigation of Organic Rankine Cycle applications

The use of organic working fluids for the realization of the so called Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) has been proven to be a promising solution for decentralized combined heat and power production (CHP). The process allows the use of low temperature heat sources, offering an advantageous efficiency in small-scale applications. This is the reason why the number of geothermal and biomass fired power plants based on this technology have been increased within the last years. The favourable characteristics of ORC make them suitable for being integrated in applications like solar desalination with reverse osmosis system, waste heat recovery from biogas digestion plants or micro-CHP systems. In this paper, the state of the art of ORC applications will be presented together with innovative systems which have been simulated in a process simulation environment using experimental data. The results of the simulation like efficiencies, water production rates or achievable electricity production cost will be presented and discussed.