The organic Rankine cycle
(ORC) is a mature technology
to convert low temperature waste heat to electricity. While
several energy intensive industries could benefit from the
integration of an ORC, their adoption rate is rather low. One
important reason is that the prospective end
-users find it
difficult to recognize and realise the possible energy savings. In
more recent years, the electric arc furnaces (EAF) are
considered as a major candidate for waste heat recovery.
Therefore, in this work, the integration of an ORC coupled to a
100 MWe EAF is investigated. The effect of working with
averaged heat profiles, a steam buffer and optimized ORC
architectures is investigated. The results show that it is crucial
to take into account the heat profile variations for the t
ypical
batch proc
ess of an EAF.
An optimized subcritical ORC
(SCORC)
can generate an electricity output of 752 kWe with a
steam buffer working at 25 bar.
However, the use of a steam
buffer also impacts the heat transfer to the ORC. A reduction
up to 61.5% in net power output is possible due to the
additional isothermal plateau of the steam