Economic Optimization of Heat Exchanger Design for Geothermal Applications

orc2019 Tracking Number 206

Geothermal power plants are a promising alternative to polluting fossil fuels. In Belgium, geothermal brines can have production temperatures up to 130°C. This makes them interesting to be used with an Organic Rankine Cycle. The brines have however a high salinity and contain a high amount of carbon dioxide. Most common metallic construction materials will suffer corrosion when in contact with the brine, requiring a high material thickness. This is problematic for heat exchangers, since they are typically designed with an as small as possible wall thickness. Therefore, a heat exchanger model is combined with a corrosion model and an optimal solution is determined with a genetic optimization algorithm. This solution will have the lowest possible total cost of ownership, taking into account not only the investment cost, but also the operational costs.