Avista

Alana Wallace, Stephen Forner, David Colman, Shea Anderson Advisor:   Dr. Robert Stiger Liaison:    Jason Graham Sponsor:   Avista

Avista

Project Description: Natural gas is transported overland in pipelines and must pass  through compressor stations in order to maintain the pipeline pressure. Power to drive the these compressors is provided by gas turbines operating on the Brayton cycle. The design team , sponsored by Avista, is evaluating the economics of a combined cycle power plant in which a Rankine cycle power plant produces electricity using the  waste heat from theses gas turbines.

Both hand and computer calculations have been used to model a suite of configurations used to recover the turbine waste heat.  Both steam/water systems and organic/binary systems were considered in the study. Several of the modeled configurations  appear to be able to produce electricity economically.  The study provides Avista  the opportunity to generate electricity in a environmentally friendly way by utilizing heat the is currently released to the environment.