Reciprocating Piston High Performance Steam Power for Small scale application
About RANOTOR
The Swedish Company RANOTOR has put substantial effort to realise a compact and high efficient small-scale steam power technology for automotive as well as stationary applications. The development project, called RAN, originates from the Saab-Scania Steam Power Project. After that, RANOTOR continued the work with the steam engine jointly with a number of technical universities, private firms and consultants. RANOTOR has participated in a project together with Volvo truck and SCANIA regarding WHR (Waste Heat Recovery). Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) from the exhaust gas is a very interesting technology for all commercial vehicles, but involves also a large market in industrial processes. RANOTOR has today four employee and one PhD student and two Master Science Engineers Currently, spring 2017, RANOTOR is carrying out a project together with a manufacturing partner with funding from Triple Steelix ( A Swedish Steel producers association) and a Swedish material expert company.
Technology
A positive displacement expander as a steam engine offer better qualities than turbo expanders at sizes below about 1-2 MW. During the last years some companies has started to look at steam engine again, because they offer superior possibility to make use different energy resources as bio fuels and solar thermal energy. Most companies has started to manufacture new versions of old classic steam engine whereas RANOTOR is working on an high performance steam engine originally aimed to be used in automotive applications, where cost/performance demand is very high. The modern steam engine operates with high pressure and shaft-speed, which gives very high specific power compared to old classic steam engine.
Fuel Flexibility
Like the Stirling engine, Small Scale Steam Power SSSP has external combustion and offers great fuel flexibility compared to internal combustion engines, gas turbines and fuel cells. SSSP is also expected to offer advantages when harnessing solar energy in solar thermal power application. The multi-fuel possibilities make it possible to use locally available energy resources (solar, bio fuel), and to realise autonomous distributed off-grid power system.
Exhaust gas and noise emission
The exhaust gas emission has a potential to be very low. Due to the absence of preheat or pre-compression of the combustion air, the combustion temperature will be lower than for other power cycles, which imply lower NOx emissions without any catalytic conversion. By coating the steam generator surfaces with an oxidation catalytic layer, other emissions such as carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons can be reduced in a cost effective way. The SSSP has also a potential to be very silent and vibration free and hence offer an environmentally friendly power source that can be placed close to people in mobile applications as well as in buildings.
Applications
Concentrated Solar Power
The growing interest for smaller Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants has increased the interest of steam engine, which is offering more attractive performance at smaller power output ( 10 kW– 1 MW). CSP offers high dispatchability compared to photovoltaic, thanks to the possibility to store heat instead of electricity. On large scale, CSP is usually coupled with steam turbines, which are not efficient at kilowatt scale. The RANOTOR steam engine offers a cost effective and reliable solution for these applications. Moreover a hybrid system can easily be implemented: a biomass boiler can represent a sustainable solution to be coupled with solar energy.
RANOTOR company has developed a so called Steam Buffer, which is a regenerative heat exchanger with higher energy density and power density than steam accumulators. There is a very small amount of high temperature and pressure steam in the Buffer, that means no hazard even if a break down would happened. The Steam Buffer provides the same steam quality of the old steam accumulator (Pressure & Temperature) during the discharge process.
Contact
For questions or general interest please don’t esitate in contacting us
Ranotor 