Analisi tecnico-economica di cicli combinati TG/ORC

Cogeneration from biomass and waste showed significant evolution in the last years. Actually, some energy conversion technologies fuelled by biomass and biogas are particularly suitable for distributed generation, namely Organic Rankine Cycles (ORC). However, small scale cogenerative plants based on ORC in the power range of some MWel present low conversion efficiency and high costs of operation. For this reason, the current research aiming to overcome these limitations is oriented to innovative configurations and applications of the ORC technology, such as, for instance, the direct coupling of the ORC line with the biomass boiler, without any intermediate heating fluid, or the realization of regenerative J&B/ORC combined cycles. This work is focused on the study of combined cycles for medium scale cogeneration (1-10 MWel). The different plant configurations based on the commercially available machines are analyzed in order to evaluate the energetic performance and the economic advantage. The study shows that for medium scale cogeneration the regenerative J&B/ORC combined cycle is a valid technology in terms of energy conversion efficiency. On the other hand, this solution results economically advantageous for industry, whereas applications in the tertiary activities do not seem promising as well.