Energy Recovery

[eng123]

I have a energy recovery question here. In a farm, they have their own biomass boilers to generate power, but the energy waste is high. They use a lot of cooling fan to cool down the saturated steam after the turbine generator. A lot of the steam is injected into the atmosphere too. No chillers were installed.

In the summer season, they can still use the excess heat to dry up corps. But, So of the time, the after process steam is hard to deal with.

They are now planning to recover the wasted energy. Preferably using the excess energy for either industrial refrigiration (like cold storage for food) or even air-conditioning (cooling office space). If not, at least they can stop using so many cooling fan or inject the after process steam out of the system.

My questions are:
1. How can they do that?
2. What are chillers?
3. Is there such a thing as a compressor (in refrigeration cycle -- compressor, condensor, expension valve blah blah blah, not the same as steam compressor that add pressure to the steam) that can run from the superheated steam like the turbine generator?
4. It will be very much appreciated else can you direct me to the sources where I can find the solutions to the problem?

Thank you very much.

 

[Goorah]

Depending on the steams pressure and temperature and available mass flow, absorption chillers could be used to produce refrigeration or cooling.

For low temperatures; ammonia/water absorption chillers could be used.

For high temperature (comfort cooling) with circulating fluids cooled to about 40F, lithium bromide/water absorption units are available from most major manufacturers: Trane, carrier, York, McQuay and many japanese and korean manufacturers.