Conversion of low-grade heat from FCC absorption-stabilization system to electricity by organic Rankine cycles: Simulation and optimization

Abstract

In this study, the organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is applied to be integrated into the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) absorption-stabilization system to extract and convert the low-grade process heat to electricity. This newly integrated system is simulated by the Aspen Plus software. For the simulation, eleven different dry and isentropic working fluids are selected to investigate the energy conversion performance of the incorporated ORC system. It is found that, the performance depends highly on the operational parameters, such as mass flow rate and the evaporation pressure of the working fluids, outlet temperature of the process stream. After optimization, the working fluids R124 and R227ea are determined to be the best candidates due to their highest output net work in HCT (high critical temperature) and LCT (low critical temperature) working fluids, respectively. A further optimization has been conducted based on the economic evaluations (i.e., electricity production cost (EPC) and total annual profit (TAP)). Results show that, for the HCT working fluids, the use of working fluid of R245fa allows the EPC to be the lowest, while the application of R124 obtains the highest TAP. For the LCT working fluids, R227ea is the best choice due to its lowest EPC and highest TAP.