Located in Wuxi in the Jiangsu region, in China, the plant will produce electricity harnessing the waste heat available from a PET manufacturing process.
Sanfame waste heat recovery power plant in China is now in operation! Our Commissioning and Service Director, Lorenzo Mancini, leading a team of young engineers and expert professionals, with the support of TICA colleagues, successfully completed the start-up of two ORC units in August. The power plant can now deliver 5.8 MWe of electricity recovering the waste heat available from a PET production facility.
Exergy’s ORC unit harvests the available heat from the overhead process steam and non-condensable gases (NCG) flow from the customer’s process column.
The ORC system here replaces the function of conventional column overhead condensers with the key advantage of simultaneously generating electrical power. The flow of process steam and NCG is directed to the ORC heat exchangers transferring their heat to the organic working fluid of the ORC power cycle. The organic fluid vaporizes and is then conveyed to Exergy’s high efficiency ROT expander to produce electricity.
Process steam and NCG flow and organic working fluid are never in contact, hence there is no possibility of contamination of the process steam and steam condensate.
The ORC system is fully integrated with the customer’s process and has no impact on PET production rate even during start-up and shut-down transients.
This technical solution will allow to maximize the efficiency of the PET manufacturing process, reducing fossil fuel energy demand and the associated CO2 emissions. The power plant will help saving the emission of approximately 17,000 tons of CO2 and the consumption of 8,500 toe per year.
