Benefits

  1. Reduction of greenhouse gases and pollutants emissions (Kyoto). The LOW-BIN project will lead in the development of two geothermal power generating machines, which target new geothermal markets, the one of low temperature resources and the one of cogeneration of heat and power. Geothermal binary power generation is a pollution free technology leading in reducing effectively greenhouse gases emissions to the atmosphere resulting from power generation by fossil fuels. According to our estimation, the short-term emissions reductions resulting from the LOW-BIN project (by 2010) amounts at around 3.6 million tons of CO2. Long term CO2 emissions reduction is expected to be considerably larger, due to:
    • The large energy potential of low temperature hydrothermal resources of Europe, which exceeds the amount of 10.000 MWe.
    • The cost reductions to the geothermal heat and power cogeneration schemes arising from the second prototype, which will facilitate the exploitation of the vast resources of enhanced geothermal systems, estimated that can cover 70% of energy use in EU.
  2. Improving overall energy efficiency. Energy conversion efficiency to electricity from geothermal heat is increased from 7-15% of existing electricity generating geothermal plants, or from 35-60% of existing geothermal cogeneration schemes to around 98-99% for the second LOW-BIN prototype. That way geothermal resources are exploited with the highest possible efficiency, when combined with a district heating scheme. In addition, both LOW-BIN prototypes can be used in industrial waste heat recovery systems, resulting in additional power to be generated from waste heat, especially in electricity intensive industries (which need electricity and not heat), further improving energy efficiency in the European Union.
  3. Increasing the use of renewable energy: The LOW-BIN project will result in increasing effectively the use of geothermal energy, a renewable energy form, by the addition of more than 10.000 MWe to low temperature geothermal electricity resource base, and by dramatic cost reductions to geothermal cogeneration (short term) and hot dry rock (long term) exploitation schemes. These cost reductions will result in accelerating the utilization of over 20.000 MWth European geothermal resource base of 120-150ºC, for cogeneration of heat and power. Moreover, the low temperature LOW-BIN machine will find new applications in solar thermal electricity conversion, where hot water of temperature 80-90ºC is delivered by standard solar water heaters, which will further increase the share of renewable energy in the European energy market.
  4. Enhancing the competitiveness of European industry: The competitiveness of European industry will be effectively increased by the LOW-BIN project as:
    • - European industry of geothermal electricity generation machines will obtain a competitive advantage (low temperature geothermal electricity generation and low cost geothermal cogeneration) effectively assisting its efforts to enter the geothermal binary power market.
    • - European industry will be able to benefit from a new technology which can generate additional electricity or provide cogeneration of heat and power from waste heat recovery systems, reducing energy costs and improving competitiveness, especially of electricity intensive industries.
  5. Introduction of innovative and cost competitive renewable and energy efficiency technologies into the market. The main innovation of the first LOW-BIN prototype is attributed to commercial electricity generation from lower than 90ºC geothermal resources with competitive costs. The competitive costs will result from the use of low cost materials compared with the ones needed in higher temperature machines. The conversion efficiency will be optimised from the ability of the machine to operate at a variable temperature and flow rate range. The main innovation of the second LOW-BIN prototype arises from the use of high temperature cooling water (60-80ºC) coupled with relatively low temperature of energy supply (120-150ºC), compared with existing biomass machines, where the energy supply is at 300ºC. This machine allows increasing energy utilisation efficiency of geothermal cogeneration by a factor of 2-4, up to the value of 99%. Both machine types, after the demonstration period of the prototypes, where the final operation tuning and technology improvements will be made, will be available to the market.