Application: Geothermal Heat Recovery
Power Output: 65 kWe (gross)
Hot Water Inlet Temperature: 230°F
Hot Water Flow Rate: 150 GPM
ElectraTherm successfully commissioned a Power+ Generator at the Florida Canyon Mine in Imlay, Nevada. This application is the first of its kind, using geothermal brine as a renewable power source in order to generate clean electricity with ElectraTherm’s ORC system. At 8,000 run hours per year, the remote geothermal heat recovery system will produce an additional 520 megawatts of clean electricity annually.
ElectraTherm marked the occasion at Florida Canyon Mine with a commissioning ceremony including officials from the Department of Energy (DOE) and Jipangu International, the mine operator. Attendees representing the mining and utility industries also joined in a tour of the newly developed Power+ configuration. The machine was manufactured with a cleanable heat exchanger, an increased gross power output of up to 75kWe and a fully-containerized solution for ease of transportation and installation through a grant from the DOE for $982,000. This also marks the first installation where ElectraTherm is providing not only the ORC equipment but ORC power generation as a metered service.
ElectraTherm’s Power+ utilizes organic Rankine cycle (ORC) technology to generate electricity from low temperatures unattainable by other technologies. First, hot water enters the Power+ to boil a working fluid into a vapor. The high pressure vapor expands through ElectraTherm’s patented twin screw power block, spinning an electric generator. After turning the twin screw expander, the vapor is then condensed back into a liquid through the use of an external air cooled condenser. Following condensing, the working fluid flows back to the evaporator as a liquid to repeat the process. The result of the project was a successful demonstration and a unit that was sized for smaller resources, could be operated and monitored remotely and was easy to maintain.
According to reports by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, there are tens of thousands of oil and gas wells in the U.S. alone that co-produce hot water at optimal temperatures for the Power+. This produces millions of barrels of water which could be captured as fuel to generate clean power. Through collaboration with the DOE and commercial installations, ElectraTherm will continue to make inroads with this tremendous untapped resource. Using ElectraTherm’s waste heat to power system, the oil and mining industry can take advantage of the hot water (co-produced fluids) to generate clean electricity from geothermal heat.