Abstract
During compression, a gas heats up, almost in all cases this heat being wasted, either by cooling the gas because it is too hot for the application, or by storing the gas and letting the compressed gas cool naturally in the storage tank. This paper presents a waste-energy (heat) recovery system from the gases compressed by an oil-free screw compressor. The gases compressed by this compressor have a very high temperature compared to an oil injected screw compressor, due to the fact that the oil used to lubricate the rotors also acts as a heat sink, the oil free variant which is used when you want a very high purity of the gas, has higher tolerances and more friction between the rotors which result in a higher gas temperature. The recovery system uses a heat exchanger to extract the waste energy from the gas and at the same time it will cool it for immediate use. Depending on the requirements, the energy recovered may be used immediately to produce useful work or stored for a later use. It may be used for heating a building, to produce steam for a turbine driving electrical generator, or in other forms.
Highlights
A method for rational use of energy in air compression is heat recovery, which is a secondary product in the compressed air production
Studies made on compressed air energy storage (CAES) systems, analyse different models at small scales, up to 1 kW discharge energy and at 12 bar storage pressures [12]
INCDT COMOTI has developed a piece of equipment for converting the energy of compressed air into green electricity, using an oil injected screw compressor and an oil injected screw expander
Summary
A method for rational use of energy in air compression is heat recovery, which is a secondary product in the compressed air production. There is a great potential of energy that can be saved or recovered from compressed air systems, having great potential for improving both the energy savings and CO2 emissions [1]. Companies have developed their own heat recovery systems in self-contained complete systems, rotary screw compressors, boosters and blowers that are well suited for heat recovery. The compression heat is stored at a higher temperature in the storage tank and a generation of a larger quantity of energy output can be expected [3]
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