Techno-Economic Comparison of Several Technologies for Waste Heat Recovery of Gas Turbine Exhausts

Abstract The waste heat recovery from the gas turbine (GT) exhaust is typical for increasing performance and reducing CO2 emissions in industrial facilities. Nowadays, numerous already operating gas turbine plants could be retrofitted and upgraded with a bottoming cycle powered by the exhaust gasses. In this case, the standard solution would be to use a water steam Rankine cycle. However, even if this technology usually yields the best efficiency, other alternatives are often preferred on the lower size scale. Organic Rankine cycles (ORCs) are the commercial alternatives to steam Rankine cycles, but many other alternative cycles exist or can be developed, with potential benefits from safety, technical or economic points of view. This study compares several alternative technologies suited to recover gas turbine waste heat, and a detailed cost analysis for each is presented. On this basis, a guideline is proposed for the technology choice considering a wide range of application sizes and temperature levels typical for waste heat recovery from gas turbines. The compared technologies are ORCs, Rankine cycles (RCs) with water and ammonia mixtures at constant composition, supercritical CO2 cycles (sCO2), sCO2 cycles with mixtures of CO2 and other gasses. As it resulted, ORCs can achieve the lowest levelized cost of energy (32 $/MWh–46 $/MWh) if flammable fluids can be employed. Otherwise, Rankine cycles with a constant composition mixture of water and ammonia are a promising alternative, reaching a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of 36–58 $/MWh.