Turboden, an Italian manufacturer of organic rankine cycle (ORC) systems, has announced the start-up of what it defined as the world’s largest steam-producing heat pump.
The company, part of Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, said the project consists of a large heat pump (LHP) coupled with mechanical vapor recompression (MVR).
“It is capable of generating 12 MWth of superheated steam at 3.4 bar(a), raising the temperature to 150–180 C. The system recovers low-grade waste heat from the industrial process and upgrades it using CO₂-free electricity,” the company said in a statement. “It is outperforming expectations, with a coefficient of performance (COP) 10% above the guaranteed value.”
The original guaranteed COP is 2, according to information published by the company on the website of the Technology Collaboration Programme on Heat Pumping Technologies (HPT TCP) under the International Energy Agency (IEA). The low-grade heat sources range from 10 C to 20 C, and the system can operate continuously, producing 20 tons per hour of superheated steam. The working fluid is isobutane.
The new system was installed at a site operated by Austrian-headquartered paper manufacturer Delfort in Tervakoski, Finland. It invested €50 million ($58.8 million) in the project, with support from the Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the European Union’s NextGenerationEU program.
“One of the key challenges of the project was to install the heat pump inside an existing room with limited footprint available. Turboden designed the plant to ensure optimal accessibility, maintainability, and performance,” Turboden further explained. “This was achieved through a close and collaborative engineering effort between Turboden and Delfort, resulting in a tailor-made plant set-up fully integrated in the paper mill. In addition, Turboden managed the seamless interaction between the heat pump and the MVR across all operating phases, applying advanced process know-how and sophisticated system integration capabilities.”
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