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Industrial plants waste tons of water that is still hot and has a lot of energy left in it. My idea converts that waste heat to electricity.


Description

Summary

Many power plants and factories use water for cooling plant equipment such as air compressors, turbine generator lube oil coolers, hydrogen coolers, stator oil coolers, hydraulic oil couplings,fuel oil heaters and other various plant equipment. Power plants have boiler blow downs that send hot water to a flash tank and all that heat is wasted. One such blow down is used for water chemistry all the time if silica is present in the boiler water . This is a 1 inch line under 2500 psi and about 800 degrees F. and it goes to a flash tank then to a drain and a vent line out the top of the flash tank . Sometimes they have to blow down 24 hours. Also Auxilliary steam that has been used in various locations in the plant goes to a heat exchanger inside a condensate recovery tank to condense that steam back to water again.. All steam traps from the plant can go to the recovery tank also to heat the water in the tank with steam coils before going back to the condenser. This would help keep exhaust hood temperatures down on the low pressure turbine.My idea is to collect all that hot water in a holding tank and use it to boil the freon or ammonia in the evaporator and run a closed loop Rankine Cycle turbine to produce electricity like in the below diagram. Cold water 50 to 60 degrees F. from a well or deep lake or deep ocean water can be used as the condensing medium for the condenser. The greater the temperature/pressure differential across the turbine is the more electricity can be made.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/100years/stories/otec.html

 


Category of the action

Mitigation - What U.S. Federal Agencies can do to mitigate climate change


What actions do you propose?

Making good use of waste heat by producing electrical power from it would help the plants heat rate and drive down fuel consumption and lowerThe governments "Climate Action Plan" would help fund the idea: http://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change emissions for the plant. This is an overall win for the environment.


Who will take these actions?

Businesses should jump at this for fuel savings. Any extra power made could be sold thus making some industries Independent Power Producers. The governments "Climate Action Plan" would help fund the idea: http://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change


Where will these actions be taken?

These actions could be performed world wide.


How much will emissions be reduced or sequestered vs. business as usual levels?

Depends on how many  BTU's can be recovered and used to boil off freon or ammonia to drive the closed loop Rankine Turbine /Generator to make electricity.


What are other key benefits?

I study the idea daily and have found the idea can reverse many of the ill effects of climate change that fossil fuels are bringing us today such as Co2, SOX, NOX, particulate matter,  and so on...


What are the proposal’s costs?

Perhaps a few million dollars per site to get 8 to 10 MWs in this manner..


Time line

Perhaps 1-5 years per site once a test facility has been built..


Related proposals

Only 2 on my proposal list don't use this technology. Click on proposal list here on my profile page :

https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/member/-/member/userId/1005099


References

OTEC technology has not been used in this way yet..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion