Industrial Market
The industrial market and industrial waste heat recovery applications take advantage of the scalability of MicroPower's chips to recover and convert heat to electricity from large and complex areas. In general, the applications fall into two categories:
- Energy recuperation in cases where surplus process heat is not presently recoverable using standard recuperative techniques; and
- Bottoming cycles to extract and convert residual heat to electricity where another technology is used for primary power generation.
These are physically large scale projects and examples follow below.
Industrial Waste Heat Recovery (Power Mode)
Electric arc furnaces, aluminium smelt pots, glass furnaces, and magnesium smelting cells are all examples of industrial processes which require vast amounts of electricity. However, these processes also produce large quantities of waste heat that is lost into the environment. For minimal additional operating cost, a portion of this waste heat can be recovered and converted into electricity by using the MicroPower Chip, thereby offsetting a plant’s current power consumption. The double benefit is a reduction of heat load and the production of electricity without increasing operating costs.
The capital outlay for each project could vary substantially since these applications vary considerably, however, given that MicroPower expects $1 per watt installation as the norm, payback periods on the order of four years could be expected.
Industrial waste heat recovery experts estimate that there is the equivalent of 95 gigawatts in the US that can be easily recycled. One can estimate the global recovery potential as being at least twice that of the US, so 190 gigawatts.
Centralized Power Plant Waste Heat Recovery (Power Mode)
There are over 10,000 power generating plants in the US alone that consume coal, oil, natural gas, and other gases, and an estimated 50,000 worldwide. In most power stations, mechanical power is produced by a heat engine which transforms thermal energy into rotational energy but not all thermal energy can be transformed into mechanical power, according to the second law of thermodynamics. Consequently, virtually every power plant generates substantial amounts of waste heat, a certain amount of which is not recoverable using current technology. Fitted with MicroPower Modules, 10% more electricity could be produced from the captured waste heat, with the customer getting a payback on their investment in just over three years.
Bottoming Cycle for Geothermal Power Plants (Power Mode)
Geothermal power plants cannot presently produce additional electricity
from the heat of the 200°C “brine” that is normally pumped back into the earth. This temperature is too low for conversion by other recuperative technologies but can be converted at about 20% efficiency by MicroPower Chip technology. For negligible additional operating cost, a power plant can increase its electrical output by using the MicroPower Chip.
A case study on a 25-megawatt plant in Hawaii determined that eight megawatts of available energy is simply returned to the injection wells for lack of suitable energy extraction technology. Converting this to electricity using MicroPower Chip technology would increase the plant output by over 6% with a negligible increase in operating cost, contributing more than $1.25 million revenue annually for a capital cost estimated at about $2.5 million. Total global geothermal production is 9.85 gigawatts annually.
