Exergy’s Denizli Tosumlar ORC geothermal plant in Turkey wins top plant award

The Denizli Tosunlar ORC geothermal power plant in Turkey received the Top Plant award in the Renewable energy project domain. Italian company Exergy S.p.A. built it for its client Akça Enerji in 2015.

The Power Magazine awarded the Denizli Tosunlar ORC geothermal plant as a part of its “Power Awards” competition, and announced its decision in the December issue of the magazine. A jury comprised of the U.S.-based magazine’s editors selected this 4 MW facility as the best in the Renewable projects category. Other categories include Natural gas-fired, Coal-fired, and Nuclear projects. The winner in each of the category was chosen for demonstrating an innovative design and engineering upgrades, for producing power more reliably or economically than comparable plants or demonstrating a new generation or environmental controls technology.

The Turkish branch of Exergy built this organic Rankine cycle (ORC) geothermal plant for its client Akça Enerji. It is the world’s first geothermal power plant with two-pressure-level cycle on a single-disk turbine. The Denizli Tosunlar has been operational since June 2015. It has already received an award in February 2016 – the key European Geothermal Innovation Award from the European Geothermal Energy Council for innovation demonstrated in this geothermal plant.

“We are very proud to have received a second award this year for our Denizli Tosunlar power plant. This repeated recognition gives evidence of the technological breakthrough this plant represents and rewards the commitment and the effort that Exergy put into R&D activities to keep us at the forefront of innovation by achieving new, smarter and more efficient applications of our technology. We are constantly working on further advances in technology for the ORC market in order continue to evolve and sustain clean power generation,” said Claudio Spadacini, chief executive officer of Exergy, which appear to have achieved considerable success in Turkey in the last several years.

Organic Rankine cycle usually uses low boiling point organic working fluids, such as atmospheric ethane, n-Pentane and Isopentane, etc. the medium and low-temperature geothermal fluid is used to exchange heat with low boiling point organic working fluid to make the latter evaporate and generate steam with high pressure to drive steam turbine to do power generation.

Organic – pentane, propane, ammonia and coolants