ENGINEERING JOURNAL CHIANG MAI UNIVERSITY

Volume 26, No. 03, Month DECEMBER, Year 2019, Pages 156 - 170

Life cycle assessment of organic rankine cycle power plant combined with centralized drying room from geothermal energy

Panisa Ondokmai and Nattaporn Chaiyat

Abstract Download PDF

This research studies environmental impacts of an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) power plant combined with a centralized drying room from geothermal energy by using a life cycle assessment (LCA) under the ISO14040 and 14044 standards to consider the 10 impact categories of the midpoint environment impact. A combined heat and power (CHP) comprised of a 10 kWe ORC unit and a 20 kW centralized drying room, which is driven by hot spring temperature and mass flow rate of 105 oC and 3 L/s, respectively, with life span at 20 y and functional unit as 1 MJ. From the study results, the CHP efficiency is 13.46%, while the environment impacts of the CHP system consist of climate change at 5.60E-02 kg CO2 eq/MJ, ozone depletion at 2.62E-09 kg CFC-11 eq/MJ, human toxicity of 6.91E-01 kg 1,4-DB eq/MJ, particulate matter formation of 2.67E-04 kg PM10 eq/MJ, terrestrial acidification at 8.51E-04 kg SO2 eq/kWh, freshwater eutrophication as 2.01E-04 kg P eq/MJ, terrestrial ecotoxicity of 4.04E-05 kg 1,4-DB eq/MJ, freshwater ecotoxicity as 6.79E-03 kg 1,4-DB eq/MJ, metal depletion with 1.89E-01 kg Fe eq/MJ and fossil depletion at 1.07E-02 kg oil eq/MJ.

Keywords

Life cycle assessment, Organic Rankine cycle power plant, Centralized drying room, Geothermal energy

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