Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The National veterinary institute, SVA, produces heat through an incinerator which is in use
from Monday to Friday during office-hours. Before 2014 the heat was used by the veterinary
clinic next-door but after the veterinary clinic moved to new buildings the produced heat is used
in-house by SVA. However, SVA does not have the same heat requirements that the veterinary
clinic had. As a result, SVA must feed some of the excess heat to the district heating-grid since
they can’t use all the heat in-house.

The aim of this master-thesis was to analyse how this excess heat could be used more effectively
in-house by converting it to electricity or cooling and investigate how it would affect SVA
economically. Another aim of the thesis was to find and choose the best suited technology to
install at SVA. The selected technology was an Organic Rankine Cycle, ORC, which can
produce electricity from low-temperature waste-heat, in this case the flue gases. A model of an
ORC-facility was created in MATLAB. Simulations showed that an ORC-facility with a gross
electric power between 33 and 37 kW and an electricity production of 62 to 68 MWh per year
was the best alternative for SVA. Because of the few load hours, 2080 hours per year, the
investment would not be profitable for SVA since the electricity production won’t cover the
initial investment cost.