4.5 Power production

The commercial software Aspen HYSYS [11] is used to simulate an ORC thermodynamic cycle to determine the power obtained considering the operating conditions of the cycle. To determine the convenience of recovering heat from the combustion gases, it is essential to determine how much heat can be recovered. The output of the simulation model provides the maximum power obtained from the ORC. Butane is used as the working fluid and ethylene glycol as the heating fluid. Two of the best configurations and the optimized case were taken from each of the heat exchanger geometries. Configurations 12 and 24 were used for the case of the helical-tube heat exchanger and configurations 20 and 22 for the case of the finnedtube heat exchanger.

The results indicate that more power can be produced if the helical heat exchanger is used for the exhaust gas heat recovery. Tables 8 and 9 show the results of the simulation of the Organic Rankine Cycle.
