The ORC-process is a Rankine-process, where the process fluid is a suitable organic fluid instead of water.
As the relative latent heat of organic fluids is much lower than that of water, the same or better efficiency as with a two-stage steam process can be achieved with a single-stage ORC process, e.g. by using the flue gas heat of a diesel engine.
This makes it possible to utilize low temperature waste heat with the ORC process, which is usually not profitable with the steam process.
Also the drop of the specific enthalpy of organic fluids in the turbine is much smaller than that of steam, which makes it possible to make the ORC process efficient at low power.
Up to date poster on the university corridor
In addition to practical applications, the project has produced one doctoral thesis (Talonpoika) and two licentiate’s theses (Lindgren and Honkatukia).