Ormat Supplies Recovered Energy Generation To DOE Oilfield Geothermal Test
Recovered energy generation produces electricity from heat that would otherwise be thrown away. This “geothermal” energy technology would lower carbon emissions on oil fields and from cement makers, two of the three major carbon emitters to be covered by CEJAPA energy legislation. The potential is for 5,000 MW of electricity to be harvested, and CO2 reduced; just from oil drilling operations in this country.
I contacted Jim Nations at the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center, who was kind enough to give me some additional details on the tests that I wrote about last week. The DOE testing is being carried out on a 10,000 acre oil field with over 1,000 well bores to extract geothermal energy from the byproduct of oil drilling (hot water), using a 250 KW Ormat recovered energy generator unit (pictured above).
The power system comprises a commercial standard design Ormat Organic Rankine Cycle power plant. The binary power unit uses produced hot water as the heating fluid for a heat exchanger in the Ormat Energy Converter, where a secondary working fluid, an organic fluid with a low boiling point, is vaporized. That vapor is then used to spin a turbine coupled to a generator to produce electricity.
Jim’s answers, over the jump:
