ElectraTherm converting heat into emission-free power

BY JD LONG (jim@harrisonnewsherald.com)

ERIE, Pa.—With the tidal wave of green talk and fossil fuel anxiety, more companies are looking for ways to reduce toxic emissions. And one such company at the 2021 Shale Insight conference held at the Bayfront Convention Center in Erie, Pennsylvania last week is looking to make its own mark.

ElectraTherm is producing an effective way for Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) solutions to convert “sources of low-temperature ‘micro’ geothermal heat into clean energy.” The technical jargon can be complicated, but ElectraTherm is successfully converting excess heat into usable power. ElectraTherm’s Jesse Howell said it can be used anywhere there is waste heat.

“The Rankine cycle is a thermodynamic cycle widely used by power plants to convert water into steam, then expanding that steam through a turbine to produce mechanical work. The organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is a refinement of this technology, using an organic working fluid in place of water. This working fluid, in our case pentafluoropropane, has a boiling point less than that of water in order to utilize lower temperature heat sources when compared to larger Rankine cycles,” according to the ElectraTherm website.

“So, what we’re doing is providing efficiency for customers. Anytime they have heat, say from a compression engine or any source really, whether it’s geothermal, stack heat, or biomass source, we convert that heat to emission-free electricity in an effort to improve their efficiency,” Howell explained.

The company was formed in 2005 and has installed over 100 units in 14 countries worldwide; the ElectraTherm device can be used on anything producing heat at the right temperature.

“We’ve got almost two million hours of runtime,” said Rob Emrich of ElectraTherm. “It’s a rather new technology, but it’s a very proven technology.” He called the business “mature” after many years of imperfections in developing the system. But the early failures turned the market away from the concept of ORC.

“That soured the market on the concept of Organic Rankine Cycle,” Emrich explained. But after the dust cleared, the German company Bitzer Group bought ElectraTherm, and their compressor is being used “as an expander to make electricity.” Emrich said 90% of heat from industrial waste is being underutilized because the temperatures aren’t high enough to generate steam, but ElectraTherm can use a lower temperature to convert the heat to electricity. As for the cost, their units range from 75 to 300 kilowatts, with their goal of under $2,000 per kilowatt. But it also depends on how much heat is brought to them.

“The return on investment timeline is really about how much heat you can bring me to run at optimum output,” Howell explained. “If you give us enough heat to make maximum output your cost per kilowatt is far less than if you give us a small amount of heat, and we can only make 20% of the rated output.”

Emrich said there are two purposes in using the device: creating electricity and cooling the engine. “And the cooling unit, although it does make power, its primary purpose is to offset cooling,” Emrich explained. “So, it’s like a radiator that doesn’t use power; it makes power.” Some of the requests they get for using the device range from geothermal to industrial waste heat recovery. He gave one example of a crematorium located out west that wants to capture the heat they produce to make electricity. “We’re installed already in Germany on a crematorium,” Emrich said. “Wherever there’s heat, if there’s enough heat in the right temperature range, we don’t care where it comes from.” Other worldwide examples include biomass boilers in the UK and France installing the device on landfill engines and using engine heat in the Czech Republic to make electricity from biogas.

In the oil and gas world, with gas compression, they can utilize their jacket water circuit instead of a radiator and convert it to electricity instead of consuming it. But the technology hasn’t made its way to Ohio yet. Emrich said industrial stack heat from brick manufacturers or casting facilities were the only inquiries in the state. The closest to the area they’ve contracted to do business is in Virginia and New York, but they have their eye on landfill waste, which could be a gold mine considering garbage will never go out of business.