Biomass integrated gas turbine and ORC combined cycle: Layout and performance analysis

Starting from a previously proposed Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle power plant with an externally fired gas turbine and a bottoming heat recovery steam generator, in this paper a new plant scheme is proposed. The main changes concern, on one hand, a plant layout simplification by removing a regenerative heat exchanger, on the other hand, the replacement of the Water Rankine Cycle with an Organic one. The thermodynamic model of the entire system has been developed by means of the Cycle-Tempo software. The gasification process has been supposed to occur at ambient pressure and air is used as gasifying agent. Moreover, considering the small size (below 1 MW) of this Combined Cycle power plant, the new configuration embodying an Organic Rankine Cycle appears to be more suited for the biomass conversion process even though shows a slightly lower conversion efficiency.