Investigate the technical-economical feasibility of utilizing the available industrial waste thermal energy in Oman

The rapid increasing in energy demand is starting to create a burden on Oman due to its unrenewable sources of energy. Oman is formulating policies to promote using renewable energy technologies and/or minimize energy losses in industrial sectors through using waste heat recovery techniques. In this study, waste thermal energy data of five industrial companies were used to evaluate the performance of an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) unit. It has been found that the ORC technology might become a technically feasible solution to enhance the performance of industrial thermal cycles in Oman by converting the available waste thermal energy into an additional electric power. The level of enhancement is found to be affected (directly proportional relationship) by the range of temperature and mass flow rate of the available thermal source. With respect to environment effect, high performance was achieved at the first and the last quarters of the year where water coolant temperature is low during winter seasons, while the performance deteriorated is summer as result of high water coolant temperature. Unfortunately, using ORC at Sharq Sohar Steel Rolling Mills is inapplicable, i.e. the required parasitic load was greater than the work output of the expander. The economic feasibility calculations showed that using ORC unit at ACWA Power Barka I would be an economically feasible project in terms of payback period of approximately 6 years and revenue percentage of 85%. In contrast, the available waste heat at Areej Vegetable Oil & Derivatives cannot be economically recovered to electric power as a result of its long time-span of payback period.