Performance investigation of a cogeneration plant with the efficient and compact heat recovery system

This paper presents the performance investigation of a cogeneration plant equipped with an efficient waste heat recovery system. The proposed cogeneration system produces four types of useful energy namely: (i) electricity, (ii) steam, (iii) cooling and (iv) dehumidification. The proposed plant comprises a Capstone C30 micro-turbine which generates 24 kW of electricity, a compact and efficient waste heat recovery system and a host of waste heat activated devices namely (i) a steam generator, (ii) an absorption chiller, (iii) an adsorption chiller and (iv) a multi-bed desiccant dehumidifier. The numerical analysis for the host of waste heat recovery system and thermally activated devices using FORTRAN power station linked to powerful IMSL library is performed to investigate the performance of the overall system. A set of experiments, both part load and full load, of micro-turbine is conducted to examine the electricity generation and the exhaust gas temperature. It is observed that energy utilization factor (EUF) could achieve as high as 70% while Fuel Energy Saving Ratio (FESR) is found to be 28%.