编者按：日前，国际电力行业驰名刊物《Power》登载题为“？？榛⒌绯д谔岣呖夏嵫堑厝刃堋钡奈恼，向全球介绍我集团初创的地热井口电站技术及其成就。这是继新华社、、、《人民日报》等中国央媒介绍tyc8722太阳集团在肯尼亚获得的成就之后，又一个国际级媒体的推介。
《Power Magazine》在全球电力行业拥有显著的影响力。作为全球最古老的能源行业期刊之一，自1882年创刊以来，已成为电力行业内的重要信息起源和行业尺度。其影响力既源于权威性和汗青性，还由于其占有宽泛的受众群体，读者涵盖了全球电力行业专业人士，蕴含电力工程师、、、运营经理、、、技术专家、、、决策者和企业高管，它通过提供深刻的技术分析、、、案例钻研和行业新闻，援手专业人士做出更好的决策和理解行业动态！！禤ower Magazine》在全球电力行业表演重要的角色，既是信息传布的重要渠道，也是行业趋向和技术发展的风向标，该刊物宣介tyc8722太阳集团地热井口？？榈缯炯际醣曛救∥壹耪加凶灾髦恫ǖ闹魈饧际醯玫揭的谥髁髅教宓娜贤，也料将极大地推动tyc8722太阳集团技术在全球的利用。
下面是本编纂部转发的新闻链接和转载文章的中英文对照文本，以飨读者。
原文链接：https://www.powermag.com/a-modular-power-plant-is-steaming-up-kenyas-geothermal-efficiency/
A Modular Power Plant Is Steaming Up Kenya's Geothermal Efficiency
Sosian Menegai during the commissioning phase. Courtesy: Kaishan Group
Sosian Menengai Geothermal Power, Kenya’s newest geothermal power plant, is powered by modular technology that maximizes efficiency, reduces costs, and enhances scalability.
Kenya’s scenic Rift Valley region is a literal hotbed of geothermal potential. Part of the vast East African Rift Valley System (EARS), a 6,400-kilometer (km) tectonic divergence that is cleaving the African continent into two plates, Kenya’s Rift Valley forms a vertical corridor of intensive faulting and volcanic activity, hot springs, fumaroles, and sulfur-oozing fissures. But while the country began geothermal exploration for power development in the 1950s, most of its investments have been focused on the Olkaria region situated within Hell’s Gate National Park near the flamingo-flecked Lake Naivasha in Nakuru County. Five of six geothermal power stations in Olkaria are owned by KenGen (with a combined capacity of 799 MW), while Nevada-based Ormat Technologies owns a 150-MW plant. Olkaria plants in 2023 provided nearly 45% of Kenya’s total generation, a sizeable contribution to the East African powerhouse’s meager 3.3-GW installed capacity.
In 2008, the Geothermal Development Co. (GDC), a state-owned special-purpose vehicle tasked with accelerating the nation’s geothermal resource development, expanded its focus to the Menengai region just north of Olkaria, at the site of a massive shield volcano with one of the biggest calderas in the world. While GDC says the Menengai complex harbors a potential of 1,600 MW, its long-term goal is to develop 465 MW of geothermal steam equivalent.
In 2013, it took the first step to competitively award the first three initial 35-MW power projects at the complex to three independent power producers (IPPs): Orpower 22 (a former subsidiary of New York firm Symbion now owned by China’s Kaishan Group), South African-based Quantum Power East Africa (now majority owned by UK firm Globeleq), and Nairobi-headquartered Sosian Energy. In August 2023, the first of these projects—Menengai III, now formally known as the Sosian Menengai Geothermal Power—wrapped up a 16-month construction timeframe and began delivering first power to the grid.
Map showing location of geothermal area along the Kenyan Rift Valley. Courtesy: KenGen
A Technology Breakthrough
Sosian’s condensed timeframe is especially stunning given that traditional geothermal development can exceed seven years. This is owing in part to a complex process that involves drilling and testing multiple wells, selecting a centralized power plant location, ordering steam turbines, and constructing extensive steam collection and reinjection systems. The traditional approach is also ridden with risks, including significant delays and inefficiencies, such as energy losses from steam pressure drops, thermal losses over long distances, and the underutilization of wells with varying pressures.
Sosian, to some measure, had the benefit of the GDC’s public-private partnership model for developing Menengai, under which the GDC assumes upfront risks of geothermal development. The state company has also notably set out to develop the field in five phases, starting with a 105-MW “steam sales” model, where it supplies steam from drilled wells to the power plants via a 25-km steam gathering and piping system. As of 2023, GDC had drilled 53 wells with a potential of 169 MW.
However, the power plant’s success can also be attributed to a distinctive new geothermal development process introduced by China’s Kaishan Group. Dr. Tang Yan, general manager of Kaishan Group, recalled realizing the need for a dramatic shift at a 2015 geothermal conference in Melbourne, Australia, where experts discussed the pitfalls of conventional methods. “I said, ‘Why don’t you put a power plant on the wellhead and do it phase by phase?’ ” he recounted.
Overcoming Traditional Challenges
While the approach proposed to support incremental power production from the start while providing revenue to support future project expansion, Yan learned no technology to support the approach was commercially available. Kaishan, which had then already begun its transition from a giant Shanghai-headquartered air compressor maker to a diversified global company, jumped into action to leverage its 2012-developed Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) expander and screw steam expander technologies.
The technologies—originally developed for waste heat recovery from refineries and steel mills—allowed Kaishan to optimize geothermal power generation by maximizing energy output from varying well conditions, reducing inefficiencies, and enabling the development of four types of decentralized, modular power plants that are quicker to deploy and more adaptable to different geothermal fields, Yan told POWER. “These modular power plants include the steam screw expander modular power plants, the steam ORC modular power plants, the brine ORC modular power plants, and the steam and brine dual resource modular power plants,” he explained.
Steam screw expanders are specifically designed to handle wet or saturated steam, which is common in geothermal wells, effectively extracting energy from a wider range of well conditions, including wells with high non-condensable gas (NCG) content that may not be suitable for traditional turbines. ORC systems, meanwhile, are adept at converting lower-temperature steam and brine—byproducts that would otherwise go to waste—into additional electricity, Yan said.
In addition, Kaishan’s modular plants can be used to form hybrid cycles or thermal systems to meet any production well conditions, maximize their power output, and eliminate low-head pressure (WHP) wasted wells or idling wells. Because the technologies can be adapted to specific geothermal resource conditions at different project sites, they can be tailored to provide stellar efficiency, he said. “We can improve the well thermal efficiency of, for example, medium enthalpy wells, to up to 18% and 19%,” he said. That compares to only 8% to 12% for traditional centralized power plants that only use single-flash steam, he noted.
he 35-MWe Sosian Menengai Geothermal Power plant was commissioned in August 2023. The plant uses two Kaishan geothermal steam counterpressure screw expanders, which discharge their exhausts into three Organic Rankine Cycle units. Courtesy: Kaishan Group
A Competitive Edge for New Geothermal Power
Kaishan quickly expanded the niche technology into a lucrative business. Since it put online the first of four phases of the 240-MW Sorik Marapi Geothermal Project in Indonesia in 2018, it has built the 10-MW Sokoria Geothermal, also in Indonesia, alongside projects in Turkey, the U.S., and Hungary. At Sosian, Kaishan’s first project in Kenya, the company served as the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor.
According to Yan, Kaishan’s cost-effective price point proved a crucial selection advantage. Kaishan’s EPC contract is valued at $65 million, compared to a $108 million EPC contract recently awarded for Menengai II, one of the region’s three equally sized IPP projects. The price difference is rooted in the technology selection, Yan explained. While Sosian’s 35-MW project was designed as a centralized power plant, it is powered by two steam screw expanders and three wet steam ORC modular power plants.
However, GDC’s steam contains 3.3% NCG—which represents a “huge percentage,” he said. If Sosian used traditional steam turbines, they would need to expand steam at 6 bar absolute and then consume more then 30 tons of steam per hour to remove NCG using steam injectors and vacuum pumps. Instead, Sosian employs steam screw expanders and a bottom cycle to handle the saturated steam discharge, reducing the steam to atmospheric levels throughout the entire process while eliminating the parasitic power typically consumed by vacuum systems.
“The overall efficiency compared to a traditional steam turbine is a huge game changer for this site,” Yan said. “The project only needed a guarantee of 33.25 MW, and the target was 35 MW, but we’re actually generating 37 MW.” At the same time, the project doesn’t need to purchase the extra 10% of steam for a steam injector, putting less of a burden on the GDC, he said.
A Solution for Idled Wells
The modularity of the system also proved beneficial to speed up construction and, crucially, to overcome supply chain and project management challenges posed by the COVID pandemic, Yan said. Kaishan typically assembles the modules and conducts component testing in a factory setting over six to nine months, he said. “And then, when we ship to the site, usually it takes a very short time to put them together, and you don’t need to do any welding on the power modules,” he added. “That’s sometimes where quality control can be a challenge,” he noted.
The success of the Sosian Menegai project has so far sparked significant interest in Kenya’s geothermal industry, Yan said. A key reason is that Kenya has a lot of wells, and an estimated 25% to 30% of those wells may not be supported by a steam collection system, which is needed by centralized steam turbines. “They call them idled wells or wasted wells, and they sit there and do nothing,” even if it was costly to drill them, he said. “But our technology doesn’t have that limitation because we can use any good pressure, whether they can produce brine or steam.”
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
中文翻译稿
？？榛⒌绯д谔岣呖夏嵫堑厝刃
调试阶段的 Sosian Menegai。图片起源：tyc8722太阳集团集团
肯尼亚最新的地热发电厂 Sosian Menengai 地热发电厂选取？？榛际，可最大限度提高效能、、、降低成本并加强可扩大性。
肯尼亚景致秀丽的裂谷地域是地热资源的宝库？？夏嵫橇压仁橇衫东非大裂谷系统 (EARS) 的一部门，东非大裂谷系统是一个长达 6,400 公里的地质机关分叉，将非洲大陆一分为二？？夏嵫橇压刃纬闪艘桓龃怪弊呃，其中有密集的断层和火山活动、、、温泉、、、喷气孔和硫磺渗出的裂缝。只管肯尼亚在 20 世纪 50 年代就起头进行地热勘探以开发电力，但其大部门投资都集中在位于地狱之门国度公园内的奥尔卡里亚地域，该公园靠近纳库鲁县火烈鸟装点的纳瓦沙湖。奥尔卡里亚的六座地热发电站中有五座归 KenGen 所有（总容量为 799 兆瓦），而总部位于内华达州的 Ormat Technologies占有一座 150 兆瓦的发电站。到 2023 年，奥尔卡里亚 (Olkaria) 电厂将提供肯尼亚近 45% 的总发电量，为这个东非强国仅有的 3.3 吉瓦的装机容量做出了巨大贡献。
2008 年，地热开发公司 (GDC) 将重点扩大到奥尔卡里亚以北的梅嫩盖地域，该地域是一座巨大的盾形火山，占有世界上最大的火山口之一。地热开发公司是一家国有特殊主张公司，其工作是加快该国的地热资源开发。GDC 暗示，梅嫩盖综合体蕴藏着 1,600 兆瓦的地热潜力，但其持久指标是开发 465 兆瓦的地热蒸汽当量。
2013 年，该集团迈出了第一步，通过竞争方式将该综合体中的前三个 35 兆瓦发电项目授予三家独立电力供给商 (IPP)：Orpower 22（前身为纽约 Symbion 公司的子公司，现归中国tyc8722太阳集团集团所有）、、、总部位于南非的 Quantum Power East Africa（现由英国公司 Globeleq 控股）和总部位于内罗毕的 Sosian Energy。2023 年 8 月，这些项目中的第一个项目——Menengai III（现正式称为 Sosian Menengai 地热发电项目）实现了为期 16 个月的建设工期，并起头向电网输送第一批电力。
地图显示了肯尼亚裂谷沿线地热区的地位。图片起源：KenGen
技术突破
鉴于传统地热开发可能要耗时超过七年，Sosian 的缩短工期尤其令人震惊。这在肯定水平上归因于一个复杂的过程，蕴含钻探和测试多个井、、、选择集中发电厂地位、、、订购蒸汽涡轮机以及建造宽泛的蒸汽网络和再注入系统。传统步骤也充斥风险，蕴含严重的延误和效能低下，例如蒸汽压力降落造成的能量损失、、、长距离热损失以及压力变动的井的利用不及。
在某种水平上，Sosian 受益于 GDC 开发 Menengai 的公私合作模式，凭据该模式，GDC 承担地热开发的前期风险。值妥贴心的是，这家国有公司还打算分五个阶段开发该地热田，首先选取 105 兆瓦的“蒸汽销售”模式，通过 25 公里长的蒸汽网络和管道系统将钻井中的蒸汽供给给发电厂。截至 2023 年，GDC 已钻探了 53 口井，潜力为 169 兆瓦。
然而，该发电厂的成功也归功于中国tyc8722太阳集团集团推出的怪异的新型地热开发工艺？yc8722太阳集团集团总经理汤炎博士回顾说，他在 2015 年澳大利亚墨尔本进行的地热会议上意识到必要进行重大转变，其时专家们会商了传统步骤的缺点！！拔宜，‘你为什么不在井口建一个发电厂，分阶段进行呢？？’”他回顾道。
克服传统挑战
固然该步骤从一路头就提出支持增量发电，同时提供收入以支持将来的项目扩大，但汤炎博士相识到，没有支持该步骤的技术可供贸易使用？yc8722太阳集团其时已经起头从一家总部位于上海的大型空气压缩机制作商转型为一家多元化的全球性公司，并立即采取行动，利用其 2012 年开发的有机朗肯循环 (ORC) 膨胀机和螺杆蒸汽膨胀机技术。
汤炎博士通知《POWER》杂志，这些技术最初是为回收炼油厂和钢厂的废热而开发的，它使tyc8722太阳集团公司可能通过最大限度地提高分歧井况下的能量输出、、、削减低效能，以及开发四种类型的分散式？？榛⒌绯Ю从呕厝确⒌，这些发电厂部署速度更快，更能适应分歧的地热田。 “这些？？榛⒌绯г毯羝莞伺蛘突？？榛⒌绯、、、蒸汽 ORC ？？榛⒌绯、、、盐水 ORC ？？榛⒌绯б约罢羝脱嗡试茨？？榛⒌绯，”他诠释说。
蒸汽螺杆膨胀机专门设计用于处置地热井中常见的湿蒸汽或饱和蒸汽，可有效从各类井况中提取能量，蕴含可能不适合传统涡轮机的不凝性气体 (NCG)含量高的井。与此同时，ORC 系统善于将低温蒸汽和盐水（不然这些副产品将被浪费）转化为额外的电能，汤炎博士说。
此外，tyc8722太阳集团的？？榛绯Э捎糜谛纬苫旌涎坊蛉攘ο低，以满足任何出产井前提，最大限度地提高其发电量，并解除低压 (WHP) 浪费井或闲置井。他说，由于这些技术能够适应分歧项目地址的特定地热资源前提，因而能够量身定制以提供卓越的效能。他说：“我们能够将中焓井的热效能提高到 18% 和 19%！！彼赋，相比之下，仅使用单次闪蒸蒸汽的传统集中式发电厂的热效能仅为 8% 至 12%。
35 MWe 的 Sosian Menengai 地热发电厂于 2023 年 8 月投入使用。该电厂使用两台tyc8722太阳集团地热蒸汽反压螺杆膨胀机，将废气排放到三个有机朗肯循环装置中。图片起源：tyc8722太阳集团集团
新地热发电的竞争优势
tyc8722太阳集团迅速将这项小众技术拓展为一项利润丰富的业务。自2018 年在印度尼西亚投产 240 兆瓦 Sorik Marapi 地热项目四期工程中的第一期以来，该公司已在印度尼西亚建造了 10 兆瓦的 Sokoria 地热项目，此外还在土耳其、、、美国和匈牙利发展了项目。Sosian是tyc8722太阳集团在肯尼亚的第一个地热项目，公司担任工程、、、采购和施工 (EPC) 承包商。
汤炎博士暗示，tyc8722太阳集团电厂拥有成本效益的价值点是其关键的选择优势？yc8722太阳集团电厂的 EPC 合同价值 6500 万美元，而该地域三个一致规模的 IPP 项目之一 Menengai II 最近获得的 EPC 合同价值 1.08 亿美元。汤炎博士诠释说，价值差距的本原在于技术选择。固然 Sosian 的 35 兆瓦项目设计为集中式发电厂，但它由两个蒸汽螺杆膨胀机和三个湿蒸汽 ORC ？？榛⒌绯峁┒Α
然而，GDC 的蒸汽含有 3.3% 的 NCG，这是一个“巨大的百分比”，他说。若是 Sosian 使用传统的蒸汽轮机，他们必要将蒸汽膨胀至 6 bar 绝对压力，而后每小时亏损超过 30 吨的蒸汽，使用蒸汽喷射器和真空泵去除 NCG。相反，Sosian 使用蒸汽螺杆膨胀机和底部循环来处置饱和蒸汽排放，在整个过程中将蒸汽降低到大气水平，同时解除真空系统通常亏损的寄生功率。
“与传统蒸汽轮机相比，整体效能对于该站点来说是一个巨大的扭转，”汤炎博士说道！！案孟钅恐槐匾Ｕ 33.25 兆瓦，指标是 35 兆瓦，但我们现实上发电量为 37 兆瓦！！蓖，该项目不必要额外采办10%的蒸汽用于蒸汽喷射器，从而减轻了GDC的职守，他说。
闲置地热井的解决规划
汤炎博士暗示，该系统的？？榛杓埔灿欣诩涌焓┕に俣，更重要的是，有助于克服新冠疫情带来的供给链和项目治理挑战。他说，tyc8722太阳集团通；；；嵩诹骄鸥鲈碌墓Ψ蚰谧樽澳？？椴⒃诠こЩ肪持薪凶榧测试！！岸，当我们运送到现场时，通常只需很短的功夫即可将它们组装在一路，并且您无需对电源？？榻腥魏魏附，”他补充道！！坝惺，质量节制可能是一个挑战，”他指出。
他还说，Sosian Menegai 项主张成功迄今已引起人们对肯尼亚地热产业的极大兴致。一个关键原因是肯尼亚有好多井，估计其中 25% 到 30% 的井可能没有蒸汽网络系统，而蒸汽网络系统是集中式蒸汽涡轮机所必须的！！八浅普庑┚兄镁虬纬，它们就放在那里，什么也不做”，即便钻探这些井的成本很高，“但tyc8722太阳集团技术没有这种限度，由于我们能够使用任何优良的压力，无论它们是产生盐水还是蒸汽！！
— Sonal Patel 是 POWER 的高级编纂（@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine）