RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STATUS OF OTEC BY KRISO

Abstract

The Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) adopts a method that generates power by turning a turbine with a working fluid such as ammonia using the temperature difference between the warm surface seawater and the cold deep seawater. As this has smaller variability compared with other ocean energies, it is advantageous in that it can produce stable power. In 2013, KRISO designed and manufactured a 20kW OTEC plant, a reduced version of 1MW OTEC plant. The plant used R32 as the working fluid and used surface seawater at 29 ° C and cold deep seawater at 5 ° C. The plant, which designed the cycle through EES, showed 2.45% efficiency in actual operation at 24 ℃ temperature difference. In 2014, KRISO designed, manufactured and installed a High-temperature OTEC(HOTEC) plant which can be applied to areas where other heat sources such as power plant hot water and industrial waste heat exist, although it does not satisfy surface water temperature for OTEC plant. The plant can be applied as a heat source such as geothermal, industrial waste heat, and power plant hot water. The plant uses R245fa as the working fluid and is designed with an efficiency of about 8.7% at 75 ℃ heat source and5 ℃ heat sink.[5]