Organic Rankine Cycles (ORC) are systems that can effectively recover low-grade heat for electric power generation. For ORC to be a viable technology, it should operate safely and efficiently under variable operating conditions due to exogenous and operating specifications changes.

A simple Rankine cycle is based on pressurizing water with a pump, heating the pressurized water beyond its boiling point to produce superheated steam in the boiler, expanding the steam through a steam turbine, cooling the residual steam to regenerate water, and returning the water to the pump to start through the ...

ORC: How it works In a typical ORC design, a thermal energy source feeds an evaporator to drive an expander or “reverse compressor”, which in turn generates the electricity. The provider of the heat can be natural, such as in the case of geothermal energy, or waste heat from any number of industrial waste heat sources.