Optimal integration of an Organic Rankine Cycle to a process using a heuristic approach

Abstract

Energy integration among processes has been one of the most relevant approaches in the field of process synthesis, allowing for better energy use and leading to positive environmental and economic impacts in industrial terms. Since the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is a power cycle indicated for using low quality heat as the heat source, this study aims at integrating an ORC with process streams to use the recovered waste heat as the heat source for the cycle. A thermoeconomic optimization in terms of net power produced was proposed and, by means of a case study, an improvement of 6% in specific net energy was achieved over the best value reported in the literature using n-hexane as the working fluid. For working fluids pentane and benzene, improvements of 4.7% and 8.5% were obtained relative to the best specific net energy value presented so far.