Design and process integration of organic Rankine cycle utilizing biomass for power generation

Indonesia has high potential biomass energy sources from palm oil mill industry activities. The growing interest on Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) application to produce electricity by utilizing biomass energy sources are increasingly due to its successfully used for generating electricity from rejected waste heat to the environment in industrial processes. In this study, the potential of the palm oil empty fruit bunch, and wood chip have been used as fuel for biomass to generate electricity based ORC with combustion processes. The heat from combustion burner was transfer by thermal oil heater to evaporate ORC working fluid in the evaporator unit. The Syltherm-XLT thermal oil was used as the heat carrier from combustion burner, while R245fa was used as the working fluid for ORC unit. Appropriate designs integration from biomass combustion unit to ORC unit have been analyzed and proposed to generate expander shaft-work. Moreover, the effect of recuperator on the total system efficiency has also been investigated. It was observed that the fuel consumption was increased when the ORC unit equipped recuperator operated until certain pressure and decreased when operated at high pressure.