Test of Heat Recovery Performance of a Microturbine

Recently, microturbines have received attention as a small-scale distributed power generator. Since the exhaust gas carries all of the heat release, the microturbine CHP (combined heat and power) system is relatively compact and easy to maintain. Generating hot water or steam is usual method of heat recovery from the microturbine. In this work, a heat recovery unit producing hot water was installed at the exhaust side of a 30 kW class microturbine and its performance characteristics following microturbine power variation was investigated. Heat recovery performance has been compared for different operating conditions such as constant hot water temperature and constant water flow rate. In particular, the influence of water flow rate and hot water temperature on the recovered heat was analyzed.