Optimal Organic Rankine Cycle Installation Planning for Factory Waste Heat Recovery

As Taiwan’s industry developed rapidly, the energy demand also rises simultaneously. In the production process, there’s a lot of energy consumed in the process. Formally, the energy used in generating the heat in the production process. In the total energy consumption, 40 % of the heat was used in process heat, mechanical work, chemical energy and electricity. The remaining 50 % were released into the environment. It will cause energy waste and environment pollution. There are many ways for recovering the waste heat in factory. Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system can produce electricity and reduce energy costs by recovering the waste of low temperature heat in the factory. In addition, ORC is the technology with the highest power generating efficiency in low-temperature heat recycling. However, most of factories are still hesitated because of the implementation cost of ORC system, even they generate a lot of waste heat. Therefore, this study constructed a nonlinear mathematical model of waste heat recovery equipment configuration to maximize profits, and generated the most desirable model and number of ORC system installed by using the particle swarm optimization method.