Trigeneration for cooling production machines

The Clinico Medical plant in Blonie has, in addition to significant electricity consumption, a year-round high demand for chilled water, used to cool production machinery and ventilate the premises. Due to the significant energy intensity of the cooling process, options were sought to provide this medium in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. The solution turned out to be a trigeneration system, proposed by Centrum Elektroniki Stosowanej CES Sp. z o.o.

In the presented system, the heat recovered in cogeneration is directed to an absorption chiller. During the spring-summer-autumn period, all of the heat generated by the cogeneration unit, after being converted by the absorption chiller into chilled water, is used to produce cold, divided into two sections and distributed to individual consumers in the plant, according to demand. This proportion changes during the winter, late autumn and early spring. This is when part of the heat generated by CHP is directed to the plant's boiler room.

In 2016, a contract was signed under which CES supplied a trigeneration system for the Błonie plant based on a MWM TCG 2020 V12 CHP unit with an electrical output of 1,200 kW and a thermal output of 1,210 kW, together with an absorption chiller with a cooling output of 900 kW. Centrum Elektroniki Stosowanej provided comprehensive turnkey implementation of the task: a building was constructed in which the CHP unit and absorption chiller were installed. The chiller's cooling tower and the chiller's fan coolers were placed on the roof of the building.The entire system was equipped with a SCADA remote monitoring and visualisation system.

The CHP module currently uses high-methane natural gas as fuel; however, at the time when the commissioning of the unit was carried out, the corresponding gas connection was not ready yet. In order to get the system up and running and start producing electricity and cooling, CES made a temporary installation to enable the unit to be fed with LNG along with a gas regasification station.

Expansion of the trigeneration system

Due to the rapid growth and expansion of the Błonie plant, Clinico Medical's cooling demand has doubled by 2019. After two years of operation, which proved that the solution used works well, it was decided to expand the trigeneration system and once again entrusted Centrum Elektroniki Stosowanej with this task. The new system, which is similar to the previous one, supplies electricity and cooling to further consumers and was installed in a purpose-built building.

As before, a trigeneration system was based on the MWM TCG 2020 V12 module. This time, however, a cogeneration unit with an electrical output of 998 kW and a thermal output of 1126 kW was selected in order to obtain additional funds in the form of a guaranteed bonus. The absorption chiller selected has a cooling capacity of 845 kW. The work was carried out on a turnkey basis, including both the construction work - related to the construction of the building for the trigeneration, as well as the process lines for the CHP unit and the chiller, the electricity grid and the gas grid. The system was commissioned in 2020, meeting the plant's process cooling needs.

Both trigeneration systems are equipped with SCADA-based control systems. The look and feel of both systems is very similar, making them much easier to operate. An innovation is the use of a virtual server instead of a local computer station. Data from the trigeneration plant control systems, as well as energy consumption data from two independent connections, are collected by a reporting system based on an SQL application. It enables online monitoring of energy production, heat, cooling and grid energy consumption, generating reports and publishing data in Excel format. It also displays on-screen a visualisation of the plant with the most important billing data and the basic parameters of the two trigeneration systems: operation, breakdown, CHP power and chiller power.

We also recommend an article on the MWM website about the implementation of two CES trigeneration systems for the Clinico Medical plant in Błonie. https://www.mwm.net/en/news/news-releases/trigeneration-system-for-international-manufacturer-of-medical-products-fresenius-kabi-in-poland-two-mwm-tcg-2020-v12-gas-engines-produce-heat-power-and-cold/