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Life Cycle Assessment of a Commercially Available Organic Rankine Cycle Unit Coupled with a Biomass Boiler

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  • Anna Stoppato

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy)

  • Alberto Benato

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy)

Abstract

Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) turbogenerators are a well-established technology to recover from medium to ultra-low grade heat and generate electricity, or heat and work as cogenerative units. High firmness, good reliability and acceptable efficiency guarantee to ORCs a large range of applications: from waste heat recovery of industrial processes to the enhancement of heat generated by renewable resources like biomass, solar or geothermal. ORC unit coupled with biomass boiler is one of the most adopted arrangements. However, despite biomass renewability, it is mandatory to evaluate the environmental impact of systems composed by boilers and ORCs taking into account the entire life cycle. To this purpose, the authors perform a life cycle assessment of a commercially available 150 kW cogenerative ORC unit coupled with a biomass boiler to assess the global environmental performance. The system is modelled in SimaPro using different approaches. Results show that the most impacting processes in terms of CO 2 equivalent emissions are the ones related to biomass production and organic fluid leakages with 71% and 19% of the total. Therefore, being fluid release in the environment high impacting, a comparison among three fluids is also performed. Analysis shows that adopting a hydrofluoroolefin fluid with a low global warming potential instead of the hydrocarbon fluid as already used in the cycle guarantees a significant improvement of the environmental performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Anna Stoppato & Alberto Benato, 2020. "Life Cycle Assessment of a Commercially Available Organic Rankine Cycle Unit Coupled with a Biomass Boiler," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-17, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:7:p:1835-:d:343770
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Orumiyehei, Aida & Ameri, Mehran & Nobakhti, Mohammad Hasan & Zareh, Masud & Edalati, Saeed, 2022. "Transient simulation of hybridized system: Waste heat recovery system integrated to ORC and Linear Fresnel collectors from energy and exergy viewpoint," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 172-186.
    2. Flavio Scrucca & Grazia Barberio & Laura Cutaia & Caterina Rinaldi, 2023. "Woodchips from Forest Residues as a Sustainable and Circular Biofuel for Electricity Production: Evidence from an Environmental Life Cycle Assessment," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(1), pages 1-16, December.
    3. Andrea De Pascale, 2021. "Organic Rankine Cycle for Energy Recovery System," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-3, August.
    4. Maria Milousi & Athanasios Pappas & Andreas P. Vouros & Giouli Mihalakakou & Manolis Souliotis & Spiros Papaefthimiou, 2022. "Evaluating the Technical and Environmental Capabilities of Geothermal Systems through Life Cycle Assessment," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-30, August.
    5. Kallis, George & Roumpedakis, Tryfon C. & Pallis, Platon & Koutantzi, Zoi & Charalampidis, Antonios & Karellas, Sotirios, 2022. "Life cycle analysis of a waste heat recovery for marine engines Organic Rankine Cycle," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 257(C).

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